


A Sinful Mercy

by Kichi (sentanixiv)



Series: Amoral Confessions [1]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arthur Morgan Lives, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Drinking, F/M, Gen, Gun Violence, High Honor Arthur Morgan, Implied/Referenced Torture, Major Illness, Mild Sexual Content, Red Dead Redemption 2 Spoilers, Sexual Content, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Smoking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:00:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 48
Words: 214,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26452990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sentanixiv/pseuds/Kichi
Summary: An ignoble death reclaimed from hell's gate; life's security stolen and determined not to lose again. Arthur Morgan did all he could to make amends in the time he had and it weren't enough; Sadie Adler's had too much stolen from her and refuses to lose anything more. Two strong wills in close quarters at odds and free for the now, but there's no guarantee it'll last. Divergent storytelling from the conclusion of Chapter VI: Beaver Hollow.-Harder than most of them, Abigail Roberts, and he had the fleeting sensation of being hunted through his words by a predator most skilled. “What ain’t you sayin’ to me?” she challenged, hands folded flat on her lap, foot tapping steady and firm on the ground.Charles shook his head. “It’s nothing,” he implored, seeking a sense of calm.“It’s about as nothing as John is sober,” she told him, sharply to the point.John sat heavily on the log across the way and scowled. “I’m not drunk neither,” he muttered, taking another pull from the bottle to prove his point in the way that only the inebriated could reason to.“You ain’t walking straight, John Marston, and that ain’t no lie,” she contested, readied and quick with her retort.
Relationships: Sadie Adler/Arthur Morgan
Series: Amoral Confessions [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2019662
Comments: 185
Kudos: 227





	1. Interlude: Beaver Hollow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set immediately after the events on the mountain, where Arthur did NOT go for the money and possessed enough honour to escape death by Micah's hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

Burning.

It fired along his nerves, cut through the unending ache that had soaked through his core; a bright flash which weakened alongside the strained, faint whistle of air that escaped him. The constriction as each part of him starved for the life’s breath, crying loud and voice’s lost against the roaring flames what reached for him. He could feel this, but also the soft warmth of the sun’s rise calling to him. A balm to being left to die once more by one he’d never thought capable to. A beckoning he could not heed to wake to the day, and so it faded with him into fire all-consuming.

Hell.

Calm he were in the face of it, knowing what it was he had done right by the end. Couldn’t save them all by any shot, but he got Marston out. Abigail and the kid, gone to Copperhead Landing with Sadie; safely away. Salved the wound of the Downes’s pride and set them on a path different. Sent that Austrian leech packing; one too many loans gone sore and sour, ruined one too many damn lives. Sister’d been right to ask him to use what time he had to do something good and he’d done his best. Did what he could to redeem others.

Hell, though, weren’t letting loose the hooks it had in him.

The lifetime of an outlaw, with twenty years of being the muscle behind the Van der Linde gang, and too long spent enjoying the sin that came with it meant a record tarred, scarred, and ruined. Done the worst a man could and took pride in doing it for too long to clear the tarnish in a few desperate weeks.

Hell.

That’d be the burning he felt. The devil’s own hand come for him. Irony strong, for he’d never much believed in anything but his guns and the gang; but, in the end, they weren’t a thing and damnation sure was. One more thing he’d been wrong on and one last thing he’d never make mended. Long, scratched up slate that one, but he’d no strength left for regrets.

Arthur didn’t fight it. He felt it and knew it’d be eternity being burned up, inside to out; started with his lungs on fire months before hell came knocking, scarring and scorching him from within as the tuberculosis consumed him. Stripped away his flesh, choked away his breath; it were its own damnation and he’d a doubt that the devil could out-do what this’d done.

The constant pain of breathing began to let go and he were ready to let it. Pushed for so long, run his core down to red; Arthur’d no energy and no care to scrounge up much. He’d nothing left—

Pain. Weren’t no ache but a sharp, sudden stab that pierced him through with a cold resolve he’d figured cast aside, depleted like the rest of him. Thought it done and over, but then it struck again, hard on his chest like it’d split him open. All sense of the world turned over, heady, and a third time. This time it were his back struck, ferocious and repeated until he felt the cough wake with a burning fervor, a need to breathe. Could hardly manage, but the cough fought its way free and tore others from him with it, thick with blood and sputum.

Wheezing gasps bare fed him what he needed, his grasp on life’s feeble light weak as again pain struck, hard on his spine. Forced another cough from him, wet and heavy as it cleared his mouth. Then, cold flooded him. Mountain air, crisp and fresh, rushed into his lungs as he heaved a breath. First in an eternity? No. Hours? Minutes? He’d no grasp of time, self.

Arthur coughed, wracked hard by the need and stifled by its difficulty to make it happen; the burning threatened to turn each effort to ash and he with no way to quench it. Then, a slap. Hard on his face and repeated twice more. He felt fingers pull at his chin, forced his head up as someone called his name. He tried to wave it off, the cause a lost one, but his name repeated firm like some command triggered some lost desire to live, see what fool were trying to take away his end.

Lungs good as screamed, consumed by a wave of coughing violent and venomous; blood splattered on his lips, mucus threatened to seal them. He tried to rise, to level himself upright, but all he managed was to collapse half on his side. Hands, one on his side and the other on his shoulder, held firm as he rejected the fluids, let them spill up and out even as he fought to get air in.

Minutes. Hours. God alone knew the time and he were a right bastard by hiding it. Arthur’d no mind to count, to know how many times he forced a breath and how many times he choked upon it. Vomit of pale bile mixed with the blood on the ground, but he’d no strength to wipe it away. Water, cool and pure, went down his throat at some point and eroded the acidic tang that lingered. Slow and with an ache that refused to ebb, he began to breathe in small measure more than he coughed. His shoulders, shuddered and shaken with the strain, fell to a rhythm that stuttered and stumbled, but did not still.

Air flowed and ebbed with a wheezing cadence; his mouth half open to get as much in as his lungs could manage; his weight slumped against something. Someone. Arthur tried to open his eyes, get his bearing, but the morning’s light cut deep in his vision, rammed painfully into his head until he relented the effort. Best he could manage was a blurred struggle flickering between his lashes. He groaned, or thought he’d done as much, though his voice were weak and lost easy as his world shifted and spun, dizzying.

His arm were pulled, dragged over the shoulders of another in rough prelude to the sensation of being hauled up, his feet stumbling to find purchase. A hand tight on his belt to steady him as every sense of the world slid up and over, near pitched him back to his knees but for the help. The strength foisted on him, holding him together through one struggling step to the next. Arthur tried to push it off, slurring words to chase it away, but they kept onwards.

Eventual it were that he felt his hand being raised, guided up to something firm; leather-wrapped horn of a saddle, shifting uneasily as the horse shied from him. A stern command and it stilled. Reflex of years gave him some sense to grab the horn even as he was pushed, hauled roughly up into the saddle. It near as not made him puke up again what nothing he had in his gut. Hand on his leg held him steady as he folded near double over, wheezing painfully, then they was up behind him, half in the saddle and reins taken up.

“Don’t you dare die, Arthur Morgan.”

There lay threat in those words that he’d pay worse than hell’s fare were he to disobey them. A hand on his back hauled him upright, moved around to hold him round him tight as the horse turned and fell quick to a canter with a sharp kick, a command to get moving. He’d the thought to protest, to fall back into hell’s hot embrace, but he’d no well to draw on. His chin slumped down against his chest, grasp of the world swaying between gray and black, and weak was his hand on the horn, slipped to the horse’s mane and held poor grip that tangled in the thick hairs.

His thoughts, clouded and heavy as they rode down the mountain, were to what he’d done to deserve this. To have his soul stolen back from hell’s own gates. Ain’t he done and weren’t he due enough to warrant being left dead?


	2. Chapter VII: Van Horn Trading Post - 01: Running Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rode into Van Horn Trading Post in the aims of securing safe lodging and passage, though greater obstacles exist when one half of the travelling party is nigh dead and wanting to stay that way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

Running’d become the only thing she knew and she’d lost track of how that came to be. Come from the stability of a home, ranch, and a husband down to the forced mobility of the outlaw where the only security came from your gun, tied to your ability and willingness to use it. All what she’d known gone up in flame and she’d been running since, driven to survive and outgunned by too many damn sides to stick in any one place long.

Here and again, Sadie Adler was running, coaxing speed out of old Bob as she rode down at a breakneck pace, fleeing the spectre of death that’d tried to claim Arthur. This were a race against time, nature, and the damn fool sickness that’d taken him. Expected to find him dead at the hands of Pinkertons, but weren’t a soul left up there but his passing one. He’d been there, barely warm and breath near gone as sun rose over the mountainside. Bound, determined, and scared she’d been, the last least likely to admit, as she cursed and called out to him, beat on his chest and back until that pained, thick cough started again. Pale and hanging to life by a thread what kept unravelling, but alive and she’d no mind to let it slide the other way.

“Little further, boy,” she urged, legs pressed firm against heaving sides. Sadie leaned forward, up against Arthur’s back with her arm holding him firm to her. The coughing’d faded to a whistling sort of wheeze, but she could feel the effort in his chest to get a breath in. It were all he could do, pale and cold, slipped in and out of awareness. Sometimes he’d try a protest, a whisper meant to be yelled, but she ignored the demand. Weak were his voice, saying to leave him, and strong were her will to not lose anything she held close. Not no more.

Annesburg came and went as a blur in the mists, lanterns and lamps faint as she ran Bob through the town, headed for Van Horn. There were rooms to let there and likely a doctor, which she figured a critical need by the way his breathing sounded and by the bruises what spoke of fighting that came before death’s boney grasp. She focused on getting there, getting them both safe; Arthur’d made her take on Abigail and the boy, but they were okay. John’d found them at Copperhead and she’d made them leave, told them she’d go back; it’d be fine. Pinkertons didn’t care for her head, only Dutch’s, Arthur’s; she’d make it back and see if there were anything to be done, but she made John promise to leave with Abigail and Jack, not wait on false hopes.

_You gotta run; don’t look back._

Marston looked pained when she told him that, like it were an echo haunting him. Sadie had no time to speak to it, mounted up and riding north again, back into the damn storm. They could talk to it if they met again, but she’d other things on her focus then. Get them out, try to get Arthur out, and kill any bastards that tried to stop her from either.

Dawn had relinquished its grip on the day by the time Van Horn Trading Post came to her line of sight, morning sun bringing warmth to her back as they rode in. Sadie kept them at a heady pace right to the post, reining Bob in sharply and crying loud for help. She played the married card on those that came running, claiming her husband come down sick with a bad cough overnight, relying on society’s foibles to secure them a room and hot food. Guilt stung her deep, but Jake’d been dead a half year and Arthur’d done so much to help her in the time since that she thought it maybe’d be okay. That Jake’d forgive her for this and the multitude of other lies her life had become since he’d been killed. Dutch had promised her safety the night they found her, but it were Arthur that worked to deliver it, what gave her the chance to ride out, and who helped her exact vengeance on them damn O’Driscoll fools. He’d delivered on it and she’d come to trust him because he’d let her do all that and live the way she figured was right for her. Jake, rest in peace, would’ve liked him for it and so she gave fervent hope that he’d not mind her lending Arthur their name in this time of need.

Weren’t no great effort after that that found the Adlers, one true and one false, retired to the safe isolation of the rented room, the gentlemen (of a kind) of Van Horn lending their shoulders and strength to half guide, half carry Mr. Adler up the stairs, to lay on the bed. Bob, left hitched below, was walked cool by one enterprising young man that accepted a dollar from her for the work; it was the same youth that came by with two tin plates of a watery stew, first servings stolen before it was quite set.

It were only after all this that Sadie let the door close, leaned back firm against it, and let out a breath she’d been half holding all the while. Adrenaline, fiery fuel that kept her awake and alert all through the night, drained off sharp as it had risen and she found herself sliding down the length of the door, legs no longer wanting the effort of standing upright. She leaned her head back against the rough-cut plank, a moment to gather the bits and pieces of thought that’d scattered since all hell’d started to break loose, fracture lines in the gang snapping under the tension mounted.

She pulled off her hat and brushed aside strands of hair half lost from her braid to keep them from her eyes as she donned it again. Gathered up some, she pushed herself to her feet and carried the twin plates of stew from the dresser to the side table next to the bed. Arthur lay there, near still as the dead but for some motion of his chest to accompany the faint wheeze of breath. Alive, but yet to give rise to coherence. Sadie full wanted him to wake and yell at her for what she’d done, wanted to shake him until it happened, but that he lived and slept near comatose had to suffice – a fact she held no fondness for.

She steeled herself, drew a bracing breath; wishes and regrets could come later, but she had to get him there first. That meant less on the thought and more on the action side of things.

“Used some hysterics down there,” she commented, real conversational as she dragged over a chair and sat next to him. Sadie reached out, adjusted his feet so his legs were straight and closer to comfortable while he were laid out on his back. “Distressed damsels rally up folk better than any trick other.” She smiled, brief and rueful. “Won’t be a ploy you’ll witness ever, I have any say in it; you’d laugh at me being a delicate flower.”

_You may be a flower, Mrs. Adler, but you ain’t delicate; I seen them poisonous thorns you got hid under them petals._

Almost could hear him say it, scoffing at the idea of her simpering or whimpering to play up on gentlefolk; Arthur knew well her dislike of being the pretty lady all dressed up. Only reason she’d played the societal lass in Saint Denis were to be there and make sure Colm hung for all he done. That weren’t even a time she played weak for it. Dutch’d made her dress the part, but she’d felt no need to act it; only reason she figured Arthur’d not teased her relentless on it were the subject matter, Colm, being the sort that forwent joking for ensuring the hanging.

The lack of it now, however, bothered her some and she shook her head at her brash behaviour. “God’s fool I am on this errand, Arthur,” Sadie told him flat. She took to the stew, spearing up the chunks of meat, potato, and vegetable for her portion. “Fool to ride up after you and fool to think you’d wake here to pester me.” And fool to hope that he’d wake up at all, some voice within said; she hushed that one harsh and fast.

The stew’s liquid she left in the plate as she liberated the pieces off the second serving, hunger run deep after weeks at Beaver Hollow with little food and now days with near no sleep nor food to keep her edge. The rest she’d save for Arthur, full aware that to get the watery broth in his stomach would be effort enough. She’d a narrow window to get him back to eating, to give him strength to survive this sickness; though, small favours, it were wider window to the one she’d faced for him breathing.

Sadie pushed that thought away, resolute that she had put him through that window and not to worry on how narrowly close that had come indeed. Least he was breathing now, pained and slow as the wheezing sounded in the quiet of the room. When she first rode up on him, still as death in the dawn, it’d taken shouting at him, beating at his chest and cursing him until her own lungs were gasping from effort before she got more than a whisper of air to pass his lips. Pushed him to his side once he’d started coughing, choking out what clogged his airways. Sickly mucus and empty bile; it hurt to see how little he had left to him. Hurt and made her angry enough to fight what fate, God, or whatever damn influence there were out there so that he could live. Damn but would she not lose Arthur too after all else she’d had slip through her fingers that year. And damn her, too, if that’s what it took.

Took less than an hour for her to finish the hearty parts of the meals, combining the remnants to one plate as she tried for some idea, some direction to take. Sadie struggled to plan ahead at the best of times, set on her goals and uncaring of how she attained them. Here, too, she’d acted first and to what end? Couldn’t leave him to die, couldn’t let him have the peace of it; selfish, like so many brash actions before, and yet no sense of regret plagued her. Life took its share from her and, by rights, she’d take some back. But how it was she’d do it from here?

Food, she decided, had to be the next step; she’d eaten, but he needed food and water, gauging by how little’d come up when he’d vomited before. Rousing him to make him eat felt impossible, but she’d gotten him to drink some on the mountain and she’d have to do the same here. Determined to do just that, she stood from the chair and moved around the far side of the bed. Arthur lay still the whole time, still geared up and unresponsive; she’d have to do something about the former, to gain some measure of comfort for him, but the latter were up to him.

Sadie sat herself on the bed, leg tucked under her, and grabbed his shoulders to pull at him, lever him up close as she could to sitting. She’d expected effort to it, but so much of his weight had faded with the illness that she’d pulled him back up against her without much struggle. Her own back rested against the tarnished frame of the bed and she ignored where it pushed uncomfortably on her spine, focused on keeping Arthur up, an arm around his stomach, his head leaned back on her shoulder.

“This’d be easier,” she told him, reaching to grab the plate with her free hand, “if your stubborn ass would wake up.”

That complaining, or the change in position, served to trigger some sense of reaction, some deeper breathing; it weren’t much, but when she pushed a spoonful of broth against his lips his mouth opened some small measure. Enough that she could feed him, slow and small amounts. It were a tedious sort of chore, Sadie never much the mothering type; she kept her patience by tempering it against the fear that’d ridden with her up the mountain. That he’d be dead, like Jake, and weren’t nothing to be done. She’d proven it wrong and had to keep at it; these were things she could do, tedium or not. It were the chance she’d not had a half year prior and she’d earned a right to make it work and the resolve to see it through.

Half and more of the watery remnants she got into him before a step outside the door caught her attention. She dropped the spoon, then cursed her haste when it clinked loud on the plate, but kept her eyes to the entry. Had she locked it? Couldn’t recall and too much a risk to assume she had. Sadie couldn’t reach her gun the way she sat, but she could go for the one she’d found near Arthur, returned to his holster despite the mud and scuffs on it. This she drew now, lining it up with the door.

“We don’t want no trouble, no preachers, and no charlatans,” she called, warning them it best to step off.

A quiet pause, rich with uncertainty. “Mrs. Adler, I’m none of those things,” came the voice of a woman, timid and cautious.

“Then what is it you are, girl?” Sadie’d no mind to be played here, knew that cons and Pinkertons both were like as not to be any sex they pleased. “The day’s been too long already and my husband’s just taken sick. I’ve no mind and less patience to beat about the bush.”

“My name’s Elizabeth,” was the uncertain reply. “The fellow that owns this building, he pays me to help out some and he thought—I mean to say that.” A hesitation there, as she foundered for words that would prove her point. “We saw you arrive and, well... I seen your husband before. Always real nice.” One of the wooden planks in the floor creaked as she shifted from one foot to the next. “I’d like to help, if I can.” Another pause. “And I got a bit of medicine what might ease what ails him?”

That last bit were the bait that drew her to lower the gun, set the plate aside on the side table. Food and water she could secure, same with safety by the liberal use of threats and guns, but she’d no tonics or cures to aid Arthur and the sinking sensation that he’d suffer long if she couldn’t find some medical doctor or guidance soon.

Sadie slid the gun back into his holster and did her best to lay Arthur back down to the bed before she moved towards the door, drawing her own revolver. She stood to the side, cautious as she pulled open the door. Beyond it, a young woman stood with little more threatening than a pail of fresh water and a small bag hung on her wrist. She had dark curls pinned back with artfully applied paint to her lips, wearing a low-cut gown that suggested she spent some hours entertaining gentlefolk at the saloon when not, as she’d delicately said, helping out with the rented rooms. “Elizabeth, you said?”

A shy nod, curls bouncing with the motion. “That’s right, ma’am,” came the polite confirmation. She offered over the pail, with a ladle dipped in to draw out a drink. “I weren’t sure quite what would help, but if you’ve been riding hard like Tommy said your horse had, I figured maybe some water’d do?”

Sadie took the proffered pail and set it down on the narrow dresser, beside the saddlebags hauled up from Bob while the locals helped move Arthur. She let the girl step in, careful to check along the stairs and the second floor for stragglers before she closed the door tight, ensuring to lock it that time. When she turned back to Elizabeth, it was to almost walk into her for she’d stopped a few steps in to stare at her ‘husband’ laying still on the bed like he were more corpse than person. Arthur looked rough, without doubt, with his skin pale and bruised, features sunken and grim. Lips were chapped hard from all the coughing and his chest moved shallow, but there were life still in him.

Barely.

Abrupt it was she recalled a time when Arthur’d been near as dead, but starkly different than the man laid low here. Colm’s boys had him shot and tortured, hung half to death on the gamble that the gang would ride to the rescue and into a tidy lawman’s ambush. Dutch hadn’t taken the bait and she’d not been privy to the van der Linde machinations to understand why it played out that way. Arthur’d freed himself and made his way back, sick and septic, to spend weeks half in death to recover. That’d been a different time, though; he’d health to start, good food, warm weather, and the gang still together to support him. These past few weeks, though, no one’d had any of it, least of all him. It set him at a disadvantage that left a sour taste in her mouth.

“He ain’t dead,” she said, firm. The words startled Elizabeth, who looked quick her way. “He’s just real sick is all,” Sadie said. “I mean to get him to a doctor.”

“There’s a stage that leaves tomorrow,” the girl said, gesturing to the lower level, where the stagecoaches passed by on their routes. “The main one heads west from here, but there’s a few what head south; mostly folk take the train down from Annesburg if they headed that way.”

Morning just recent come to a close, that left her almost a day to sit tight and drag Arthur back from the precipice he’d been walking between death and life. Also meant almost a full day for Pinkertons or some other foul influence to find where she’d holed them up. Equal enough risk and reward were her first measure of it, though maybe riskier to move him too far, too soon.

“What was it you said about medicine?” she asked, that planning put aside. She’d figure on it later, book them passage if it seemed he might come to some senses before dawn.

Elizabeth started at that, then nodded fast and stepped to give her space, digging into the small wrist bag she’d carried in. From it, she pulled a small bottle all of the size of her palm, two-thirds filled with a rust-coloured liquid sloshing behind a plain white label. Tincture of laudanum. “My pa works up in the coal mines,” she started, holding it out, “and it’s got him black lung. Doctor said this helps suppress the coughing, but says it works for lots of things. I thought maybe it could help.”

Sadie took the bottle with a slow nod, turning it over in her hand; she’d used some in the past, then saw too well what opium dependence did to a man in Revered Swanson. Truth were, though, that for sake of the coughing, it’d be good. “And your daddy won’t care when you don’t come home with it?” she asked, gesturing with the bottle towards her.

This hadn’t processed yet, a look of surprise quashed quickly with a shake of her head. “He’ll be fine,” she insisted. “I’ve another bottle due in tomorrow.”

The words didn’t ring with the comfort of truth; Sadie, however, kept the tincture. Each minded their own and Arthur fell under that blanket her ‘own’ protection, no matter the discomfort it’d cause others. She did, however, pull out a few dollars to push onto the girl, recompense that was quietly accepted – sign that she didn’t quite have the means to be giving as her first impression portrayed. “Appreciate it,” she said, nodding her head once and stepping around the girl to set the bottle down on the nightstand, beside the near empty plate. “Why’s it you are set on helping my husband and me?” she asked, turning to lean on the stand, arms crossed over her chest.

Pretty little thing shifted on her feet, uncomfortable, and glanced to Arthur; Sadie thought she spied a bit of red rising under the false powdered blush on her cheeks. “It’s hard to say, Mrs. Adler,” she professed, nigh shy about it.

“Then best say it quick, before you lose your nerve,” were her straight, flat advice on it. No one’d been served by hiding thoughts in her purview; no need to get fussed about it.

Elizabeth nodded after a moment and pulled absently at the material of her skirt, clearing her throat with some delicacy before she found that nerve to speak again. “I—Well. Your husband’s been here a fair few times, ma’am,” she said by way of explaining nothing much of import. “Rents the room for a night before he heads out and sometimes he’s paid for a hot bath.” She seemed to think that explained it, looking expectantly at Sadie, who shrugged.

“Even a working type don’t mind being clean,” were her response.

“We offer a, uh... deluxe bath service,” the girl managed to say, looking to any direction but her or Arthur. She stopped fussing with her skirt, raised her hand to straighten the strap of her gown instead. “Some days... well. He took us up on it.” She trailed off, uncertain.

Sadie stared at her a long while before she started to laugh, shaking her head. “That all?” she asked with a half-cocked smile. Plenty of places offered, a-hem, deluxe services of a sort and while she’d no inkling of how much Arthur’d take up such a thing, it also weren’t her grounds to have an issue with it. With the married card, she supposed Elizabeth thought she’d take offense as the loyal wife, but she cut off that any further protests by raising up her hand. “My Arthur ain’t barred from having life outside the home, girl,” she added, a means to sooth the discomfort. “I only tells him to mind himself round the house. Men’ll be men whether I like it or not. I find it’s best to not pester about what skirts his hands’ve been up.”

Seemed a fair response, all said; she’d no intent to paint him monogamous or make trouble for the sake of playing the jealous spouse. This were all a sham to get them out off Roanoke Ridge to some place he could recover, not some lifetime commitment.

“Nothing like that, ma’am!” Elizabeth were insistent, shaking her head firmly. “I mean. Mr. Adler’s always real discrete about it, only ever paid for deluxe when he was beat down.” A pause. “Or up, I suppose. Them times when he were tired or hurting and needed a bit of assistance.” She shifted, hand gesturing out in a vague motion. “Asides from helping him clean up, he only ever asked how things were. Didn’t matter what I offered or nothing.”

Sadie shrugged, not quite as surprised as she ought’ve been; Arthur played like he were rough and degenerate, but she’d never seen him laying with the ladies of the camp nor being disrespectful to most womenfolk they met. He’d a code of sorts, likely drawn from riding with Dutch and Hosea, and for all the illegal activities he thrived upon, he mostly did right by innocent folk. Outside them activities and all. “Don’t you mind either way, Elizabeth,” she said, firm on it. “What’s done is what’s been done, no point minding it now.”

The girl relaxed and stopped her nervous fidgeting, smoothing down the front of her skirts as she nodded. “Then, if it’s okay, ma’am, I’d like to help however you’d need it,” she offered. “W-with your husband, I mean. Help make sure he’s comfortable and all,” added with a gesture to Arthur. “No premium charges or nothing. It’d be real nice to be able to help him somehow.”

The girl fancied him some, this much were plenty evident; he had that way sometimes. Mary-Beth had talked now and then about how she figured Arthur rugged or handsome when he’d ridden out on some job or the next and wouldn’t hear it himself. Girl had all too many romantic notions in her head from her reading and impressed them on Arthur mostly, for all he didn’t show reciprocation. This here showed it a trend of sorts, drawing hearts without intending.

Sadie looked Elizabeth over once more, figuring that maybe she’d take the risk and allow the help. She’d no great reserves left herself, cold and hungry after weeks in the Hollow, and with all the hell that broke loose, she could feel the shadows of exhaustion sinking its tendrils into her. “Fine,” she agreed, tired of trying to reason it out.

Between them, they stripped Arthur of most his gear and settled him on the bed, under the thin blankets. It was a narrow affair and she doubted it much comfortable, but beat the ground and the floor both. She opened the bottle of laudanum and had Elizabeth angle up his head, making it easier to pour a dose into his mouth, down his throat. With that and food in him, she felt like she could breathe some, thank the girl and send her on her way with three ten-dollar bills.

“No, ma’am, it ain’t right,” she fussed, trying to push the monies back to her.

“Don’t fight me on this,” Sadie warned, firm and nearing on threatening. “Take the money, use it to get me and my husband a good meal tonight, book us on the earliest stage out tomorrow. Don’t care where, just not north.” She were banking on him being awake and able to travel, but worst came, a stage were easier than riding double on Bob.

Elizabeth were clearly conflicted on it, but she’d caught the edge in her tone. The sharp line what said her patience were run low. “Okay, ma’am.” Quietly demurred as she stepped outside, money slipped out of sight with a familiarity to such sleight of hand. The girl had certain experience with taking payment without pulling attention to it, that much were clear.

Door closed firm after that and she latched it, too ready to be done with this day just as the afternoon started. Hard to remember it were early when everything felt like it’d been a day and more, though in plenty of senses it had been. She rubbed at her eyes, shaking off the fatigue for a stretch longer. A little more and she could rest some, put her boots up and stop talking.

One last check on Arthur before any of that. She walked over to the bed, touched the back of her hand to his cheek and withdrew quick from a feverish burn. Must have kicked up during the ride, painting a sheen of sweat bright on his skin, pale and thin. Sadie pulled the blankets tight, added wood to the fireplace; Jake’d always said his momma burned out fevers and so she’d do that here. The heat would parch her, so she took a drink from the water before sitting heavy in the chair, looking over to him.

Arthur looked pained with each breath. Some coughs here and again, but most she heard were the wheeze of air trying hard to reach his lungs, then again expelled after only some small success. Run down as she felt, she tricked herself to thinking that maybe some colour were on him that weren’t there before. Thin hopes, but the sort she needed to be able to stretch back in the chair and tip her hat forward, get her some sleep for a few hours before figuring what all else ought go wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are some 250+ handwritten pages staring at me as I type up this note, spread over two notebooks and having claimed the ink supply of 12 pens (I use a fountain pen now, less wasteful). I thank you for reading thus far and hope to entertain you as the story moves on! This began as a therapeutic way to deal with Arthur's ignoble ending (DAMN YOU, ROCKSTAR) and it turned into the most writing I have done in ten years. May you enjoy! 
> 
> Or, at least, join me being afraid of Red Dead Redemption games killing off your favourite characters. /shakes fist


	3. Chapter VII: Van Horn Trading Post - 02: Willful Ignorance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first stirrings of awareness do little to clear Arthur's mind; the longer he goes without waking to his normal self, the more Sadie starts to think that maybe she were the fool in what she done. Being challenged on it, however, ain't her idea of a good time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

The goddamn burning kept fighting with cold what hooked claws deep in him, only to have hell push the frigidity out once more. He weren’t much fond of the two warring their way through him since senses first trickled back. Heavy hoofbeats of the horse were gone. He’d the sense of being pulled down, feet dragging and thudding against stairs. Voices blurred in and out of recognition; thought he heard Sadie, but making out the words were a challenge he’d not managed.

Coughing renewed itself with fervor any time he tried for anything more than a wheezing breath, beating at his chest with demand to be released, determined to consume him. Arthur started to fight that choking need, the hurt of each cough enough to make him swallow the all rest he could. It’d rise up and subside, flared strong when musty smoke filled the air. Dry warmth, comforting after the cold ground and hard ride, seemed foreign. Weren’t sure where it, or he, was. Hell, weren’t sure when it was, the way he faded in and out of consciousness.

Arthur tried to gain some hold of reality on of them times he waded out of the darkness, brief and exhausting; his eyes weren’t keen on being opened though, the pain of light threatened to split his head open time and again. He left it undone after a third attempt, feeling like he’d put in the effort of a hard day’s work by it. Frustrated by his confusion, he lapsed into a half-awake state and itched for some sign or signal from this damn purgatory to say how he’d be made to suffer for all he’d screwed up through his life.

Felt hands on him again, hauling him up some and he felt the warmth of a body he leaned back against; watery broth of sorts touched his tongue and reflex had him swallowing what thin nutrition it brought. More than he’d eaten in days and his stomach clenched, starved for it. Anything more and it’d reject, call foul, but the flood subsided.

There came a second, fleeting, when the unfocused murmur of sound sharpened and he heard a name, clear. Elizabeth? Eliza. Triggered a pain of a different sort, old and deep that were cut from the scars of the past. He’d a vision of her standing there with Isaac. Then they was gone and graves stared at him, dug over a measly ten dollars. The kind of theft he’d done hundreds of times. That were the devil’s angle, then? Let him live that over and again; see what he lost so he’d know how he’d made others lose too?

Fuck hell then.

Heard her name again and ire at the devil’s ploy surged, had him try to call out warning to let the money go, but a bitter liquid flooded into his mouth to drown his words. Tried again, but the words caught in the memory, never finding purchase to claw their way out of him, to serve warning. He choked on them and had to relent, the need to breathe forcing its way through. Regret for that came with a strong, angry desire to go back to that split second on the mountain. Alone and growing cold, when he’d been ready to let his last breath slip from him, gentle as the morning breeze. To fight no more and be done with it all.

Time slipped from him again; flipped between that moment and dozens more where he’d hurt or been hurt, choice or no choice. The heavy heel ground down on his hand what stopped him from shooting that bastard Micah. Rat. Goddamn piece of disloyal shit. Anger surged and he heard the echo of Eliza’s name again, snapped back to the moment at their graves. Only now Micah stood there over them, grinning with his hands spread wide.

_Only had to give up the money, friend._

You ain’t no friend! He wanted to snarl it, but all he had were the shuddering coughs that choked him, wheezing hard with fierce hurt. Oh, but he would serve that same fierce pain on Micah if only he could get Eliza free. Isaac. John. Jake. Abigail. He’d lost track of what ones could be saved, what ones he’d failed to, but still he felt that need to do it. To get them.

Fighting himself the whole way, Arthur slid into the embrace of the laudanum; each time he tried to move, to awaken, to react, it pulled him further towards the promise of a dreamless slumber.

-

Sadie awoke to a heavy sweat, the heat of the fire in the enclosed room grown oppressive as the afternoon wore on. Mouth thick and dry, she got to her feet and drank deep from the water bucket to soothe her thirst. Splashed some on her face and along the back of her neck to further cool her before she could remember to check on Arthur. Relief, brief, to see him sleeping more soundly than he’d been when she let herself dip into slumber in the chair beside him.

There’d been times he woke her from it, coughing or groaning from some hurt within him. She’d heard names, too; Eliza that she assumed were Elizabeth overheard in his spent state. Isaac. Micah’s name always wracked his coughs deep, hurt and anger fighting the poison that man had inflicted. Came to a point when she’d poured more laudanum into him, nearing desperate on some way to soothe his mind or body enough to rest it from nightmares. Seemed like it worked, finally, as she figured a couple full hours of sleep befell her after that, his breathing shallow, but steady. His names and curses, bleary at best, quieted to the wheezing of breath in and out.

Least she felt satisfied that he were in a state worth calling rest, enough that she felt it safe to step outside for a breath of air, cool and damp in contrast to the hot oven she’d made the room. Sadie leaned against the balcony and looked out over the decrepit excuse for a settlement that Van Horn Trading Post had become. Signs of their fight with the Pinkertons were still clear, bullet holes in the sides of buildings, a tension amidst the folk what wandered about, but the agents themselves were gone much as the money and most of the people that had once been here were disappeared as well.

Sadie watched them all going about their lives for a time, ignorant to the outlaw that lay half-dead in their midst. No signs of Pinkertons but for the scars of their fight and so that gave some reprieve. Couldn’t discount Dutch or Micah being around though, nor any last lingering pig-fucker what claimed the O’Driscoll name. Too many dangers about what could still hide from her sight and so she didn’t stray from the balcony, standing quiet guard for the better part of an hour.

Evening was starting to draw long shadows on the ground when she heard the soft approach of the girl on the steps, a rustle of her skirts caught on slivered wood, the sharp clink of tin against tin. Elizabeth smiled at her, more warmth than shy this time, as she rounded the stairs at the top. She carried a plate with some sort of fish fried up alongside potatoes and peas, honest fare for this part of the Ridge; balanced on the plate’s edge were a cup that wafted the welcome steam and scent of coffee.

“I booked you a stage, like you asked,” she said, passing along the plate and cup. “Leaves at first light, west out to Emerald Station. Won’t be no one else but you and your husband,” she added, seemed pleased with this bit of news. Rest and reprieve for the couple, she guessed, as some way to recompense the gentleman Arthur’d been to her.

“Appreciate it,” Sadie said, to this and the food. She leaned back against the balcony railing and started with the coffee, the bitter sharpness welcome despite its tang. Might serve to alert her some, mind still fogged from the sleep, incomplete and wanting more.

Elizabeth took back the cup once it were drained, toying idly with it as Sadie worked her way through half the plate then and there, sated the first mingling hunger before it could whine its way to annoyance. “How’s he doing?” she asked once she’d measured up the courage to speak it.

Sadie thought to saying nothing on it, instinct verged on wary whenever curiosity reared up, but the girl’d done nothing but help and she gauged what could be said without raising profile, risk. “Sleeping better,” she said with a nod. “Fever’s hot and won’t break, though I’ve made it hell’s parlour in there.”

“Oh, ma’am, that-“ Elizabeth caught herself, alarmed at her own outburst. “I mean. Sweating out the fever’s not what we do around here,” she clarified. “Doctor tells us it’ll turn the brain into a roast, so all’s we do is try and keep the person cool, draw the heat of it out of them with a wet cloth and all.”

That flew in the face of the wisdom she knew, but Sadie also weren’t quite the doctor she’d like to be right then. All her actions were from stories, never much one for getting sick herself, and she tossed a curse inwards for thinking that it’d serve. A grimace, brief, and regret (even more so), then she shook her head. “Maybe I’ll try that,” she said, careful in giving ground on the point. Could it hurt to try the opposite? Hours now and the fever burned; she were willing to do about anything that might alleviate it, having no sense of what were smart to do. By the book of Sadie Adler, yelling and threatening, even shooting, ought to have solved the most of it at this point, but this weren’t her book. Only parts of life what worked like that were the unsavoury ones she’d been brought into this past year, not the ones what required a gentle or precise touch.

“I’ve-“ Girl seemed awful good at being tongue-tied about her, uncomfortable still with meeting the wife apparent of a man she fancied; gave her a good reckoning, on the moral scale. An adulteress she weren’t, having no smug pride at seeing her competition of a sort. That kept Sadie from being short about her shy, truncated way of talking. Impatient to hear it out, but not pushing her no more to choke out the words without the stumbling. Elizabeth gestured down the road, towards the main hub of Van Horn, to where the menfolk were started to congregate upon a building, bright and loud. “Payroll came through,” she said, by way of explanation over explicit.

“Go on, then,” Sadie said, though she’d hardly the need for a blessing. “We’ll hold through the night fine, don’t you mind.”

Elizabeth nodded and turned to go, with a hesitation. “I’ve asked the owner to help you come morning, if your husband don’t want to wake up,” she added. “He’s promised me he’ll see you out of town safe.”

An odd promise to hear, since it weren’t danger but ill health that she’d wrapped up their presence as. Still, this girl’d like as not seen the Pinkertons come through not long ago, heard tell of the outlaws up north and the dangers there. Her sort, half an innocent for all that she plied the male ego for monies, were a type to assign meaning and story where none were set. Likely convinced herself of something, cast herself something of a heroine to help them both get out while there were getting to be done.

Sadie stepped off from the railing and gestured to the stairs, dismissal of a polite sort. Maybe invitation that Elizabeth head out to go earn herself a good night’s worth of fees for her tender companies. “Appreciate it,” she figured it a pale, but suitable thanks. She let the girl leave, steps faded to silence below, and watched her head towards the lively saloon, posture shifted as she started waving to the menfolk, calling favour to those what she knew with coy smiles and sweet words. Consummate professional type, which had her wondering how much of the shy innocent behaviour been an act to the other extreme. Shrugged it off as a matter what didn’t actually matter and moved back into the room, door closed and locked behind her. Placed the plate on the nightstand to see if she could wake Arthur later and coax him to eating more than the broth of before.

Heeding the advice on fevers, she moved to the window and did what she could to force it open, gaining an inch or so of leeway for a cool breeze to trade out the hot, musty air for its fresh taste. She’d not built up the fire before she stepped out and the wood were turned charred, radiating heat still. Sadie picked up the mantle’s shovel and pushed the bits about, banking blackened log with ash to preserve the coals for when the cold of night nipped at them both.

Then, unsure of what else could be best be done, she pulled off the bandana about her neck and rinsed it in the bucket of water. Sat herself down on the chair next to the bed and looked to Arthur, still sleeping. Still hurting. “A doctor, Mr. Adler,” she commented, most to herself than any else, “I ain’t.” A bit of effort and she’d folded the wet bandana up to a compress, used this to start wiping away the sweat shining on his skin. “And you needing a real one to get off death’s door.” She leaned back, rinsed out the cloth, and started anew. “But, we’ve a way out come morning, so’s all I need you to do is live a bit longer.” Then, amused at her own ponderances: “And me, all I need to do is stop talking like you’d be raring to answer.”

Sade sighed and shook her head. “The hell have you done here,” she muttered to herself. She’d never much fancied second guessing herself, but then, she’d always had Jake or some other to temper her haste. Fight and find a way forward; these were the rules what came to be lived by. Don’t get hung up on the fool’s past and so she chided herself on it, told herself to keep wiping clear the sweat, cooling the hot skin until the fever drew away.

-

That voice rang familiar when it waded through the thick fog about him and he ought be able to make words rise coherent from the sounds, but it blurred together. Hell, a concept he’d become intimate familiar with this day, rang clear and fierce, but there was a shadow of doubt hid in the tone what confused it. Muddled him further, roused a stubborn sense that he were needing to sort this, or something, out.

He tried to take a measure of himself, felt it all slip away like water cupped in his hands. Musty smoke and a cool touch on his brow switched lightning fast to a Dutch what turned to walk away from him, casting him down. Aside like he’d done to Eagle Flies, left a shell that had little fight remaining to keep itself whole. Left him alone up there and dead in the dawn, used up and worth nothing.

Cool, damp touch of something – cloth? Startled him, told him that no, he weren’t dead. Weren’t alone. Arthur Morgan somehow lived and breathed.

This shocked him, like some third party left to witness it. Alive. Breathing. He tested the latter, felt the agony kick up as he fought for air; the price of breath were to feel the hurt of it and he knew then that alive, yes. He were alive. But, breathing? That he’d yet to decide on the worth of and the ability to.

Why, though? How?

Micah turned tail like the rat he were. Dutch gone without words, choice clear in his not making it. His not stopping the rat right then, not responding when he’d called out for him. Left there, Arthur’d crawled towards the sun’s early warmth, thought he’d lie there and finally be done with running. Fighting. Dying.

Only, he weren’t.

Recalled brief the pain on his chest, the beating on his back; choking bits of himself out onto the rock. The ride, horse’s gait unfamiliar, being urged to stay alive. Asked. Demanded. Then-

The breath, drawn in with its painful fee, caught thick in his throat and he coughed, hard and time again as it cut through him. Felt like a pressure crushing him inwards, with the harder he tried to breathe, the tighter the grip became. Couldn’t get the air out, couldn’t get it in; tried to move his hand like he could clear the passage of it, senses greying with each second passed.

Something grabbed him, sudden and sure. A person. Sat next to him and pulled him off his back, near to sitting. Arthur couldn’t help but rest his weight on them, own hand fallen on his chest, fingers spasmed and splayed in reflexive panic. Fingers on his, pushing his arm down, trying to angle him to the side; couldn’t keep a grip on that hand before it were gone again and he felt it strike hard the middle of his back. Twice and again before something loosened in his throat and he coughed clearer, spit out a thick, mess that fell away. He opened his eyes some small measure, blurry the sight of splattered bloody mucus on wooden planks. What’d been choking him right then, expelled to die in his place.

The hand on his back returned, this time an awkward, soothing touch. “Breathe, Arthur,” she said.

Muddled and weak, it were all he could do to try. Gasping in, wheezing out; slowly, it started to work. Minutes it took. Hours? Arthur’d no idea; once he started to catch the fresh, life’s breath of air, he went for it hungrily. Starved for it. Senses started crawling back as he did so, gave him some comfort in knowing there were a person there. A woman. Knew her voice, but- Ain’t he heard Eliza before? No. This weren’t her. She’d died. Mary’d given up on him. Everybody’d given up on him, or been frank ordered to leave him. To not look back.

Only she were here, trying to lay him back down to the soft mattress of a bed he didn’t recall. She were saying how he needed to rest some, take care of himself. The words rang familiar, like advice he’d long forgotten to heed, and the voice one of the few he’d, joking and truly, said once he’d be a fool to cross.

“Sadie?”

Voice half broke over the speaking of it, but he’d reached out to grab her arm, hold her still a moment so he could focus some. See her looking at him in the dimly lit room, a sharp and sudden relief clear on her face before she pushed that down, nodded to him.

“Evening, Arthur,” she greeted, like they’d just met in a social crossing of the street. Sadie pulled her arm from his grasp, pressed her hand careful on his chest to guide him back down to the bed, to lie there as she’d been trying to say before he’d figured it her, real and here, not some delusion like the nightmares what played through his mind before.

“Where- Pinkertons?” That were one of the last times he’d seen her, Milton dead and Abigail a killer. There’d been more. The ride back and telling her what happened on the train, with John been killed, only that were equal lie to what his own life’s loyalty to Dutch’d been amounted to in the end. “Micah. Dutch.” Seemed all he could do to get the names out, couldn’t assign meaning to them; he were tired and slipping back from the cusp of aware. Tried to dig his fingers in, to keep from losing that ground.

“Cleared up,” she said, careful. “Them’s all away now and they ain’t followed us.” Seemed like she were certain of it, or wary.

The edge to her voice roused him, the cold in it cutting reason through the fog. He groaned as the breath’s toll of pain swarmed into his head, sharping his reluctant senses. “Why ain’t I dead?” Seemed the piece he couldn’t grasp right then. “Hell were there. Devil hand his claws in me, but I ain’t dead now.”

Sadie smiled and it more that primal sort that he’d seen her sport before, the type that said sanity need not show itself around her right then. “The devil was expecting you,” she said, then shook her head, “but the bastard let up his claws when he realized I ain’t letting hell itself take no more from me.” This brooked no argument; it warned what price would come if any tried. She’d two ways of being from what he knew and one were near normal. This other side, surfaced and savage, understood nothing of laws, limits, or even self-preservation. It were the side he’d seen more than most, watched it gut O’Driscolls and gun down Pinkertons with satisfaction and no concept of regret.

Tired as he were, aching as every part of him felt, and sick as he’d become, Arthur felt ire at her confidence about it. Felt like, once again, she’d gone and done something what went in the face of all he’d planned on and figured. And she had and wouldn’t she ever stop doing things what settled heavy and wrong on his shoulders? “Goddamn fool,” slipped from him as he dropped his head back down. Her maybe. Or him. Didn’t have the sense or the strength to figure it out right then.

-

Goddamn fool.

There was an accuracy to it that cut quick and deep, turning brittle the grim smile she’d borne. Sadie knew somewhere that he weren’t full there, the fever nipping at his heels even as he tried to grasp at a world turned upside down. Knew that he didn’t full mean it, or her, when he said it. Thing being, though, that she’d taken no step nearer to where that understanding lay and instead drifted to anger. Quick to rise, it came on strong; reinforced by her own knowledge that, yes. She were a goddamn fool, for thinking she’d find something more than a corpse out there. For leaving John and Abigail on their own, Jack too young to understand quite what happened. But she’d done it and could afford no regret for it, just felt a bitter stinging at his words.

“You want to say that again?” she asked, a challenge crept into her tone.

Arthur waved his hand in a vague, dismissive gesture; his eyes closed a moment, done and tired of trying to make sense of the space about him. “I’s told you,” he muttered, trying to piece words together through the fog of the fever. “Move on.” His wheezing breath cut sharp reminders between the statements, short and struggling. “Marston. Abigail. Jack. Should’ve left.”

“They did,” she said, flat. Stifled the anger best she could, knowing it weren’t fair to take it out on him like this; he’d been all but dead a day before and still sick with what damn near did it. “I got them out, Arthur,” she added, softening her tone with effort. “John found us at Copperhead Landing, where you told us to be; they’ve run, like you told him to.” Reluctant did no justice to the fighting she’d had with Marston about it, yelling at him to get his boy safe and Abigail too. Him torn up, hating himself for leaving Arthur no matter what he’d been asked to do. Ordered to do. She, too stubborn for anyone’s good, ready to shoot another hole or two in him if it’d get them moving.

“Should’ve...” His voice trailed off with uncertainty, the thread of meaning ravelled before he could say much more. Arthur lay back on the mattress, the mass of him making less a dent in it that it ought. Hardly any of him seemed left at this point, with skin and bones patched together by weakened muscles and fading will. She’d felt the spacing of his ribs when she’d turned him on his side to cough out the demon’s bile, thin and clear. Proof of how far he’d pushed and how close to death he’d been. Still was.

“They’re safe, Arthur,” she said again, reaching to grab his wrist and push his arm down from its weak, wavering gestures what tried to gesture her away. “You ain’t well, and ain’t been for a long time.” She signed, shook her head. “I don’t expect you’ll recall this later, but you’ve got to trust me. I got them away, just as you’d told him to get.” He were the only one left she trusted and all she needed here was a bit of that reciprocated if it’d give him the ease to rest.

Something in him stopped, might even have finally heard her for the fact he didn’t fight the pressure on his wrist, let her lay his arm back down. He looked her way, skin right paper thin like it might tear at the slightest rending, and she saw that brief spark of understanding. Gratitude, she could fool herself to even, and she did like fooling herself. Made it easier, to think that he’d quiet down, reassured that what he’d wanted done were done.

“Sleep, you pig-headed old man,” she added, trying to limit what hopes her mind could create. Sick as he were, she’d no right or reason to want more than him to rest. Recover. And Sadie’d no taste for the bitter idea that this survival she’d help him win would be short-lived, that his breathing would cease in the night and not come back for all the beatings she delivered to his chest, his back. “Figure on what you want to yell about once you’ve got better,” a challenge, she hoped, to keep his will grounded on the living side of things. “Hate me then for it, if you want, but you’ve got to survive if you want that right.”

Maybe that soothed him. Maybe he ran low on the fire what sparked his temper. But, his eyes closed slow and it were clear the hurt of breathing crept steadily on, but it were clear also that he’d fallen asleep a few moments later, struggle subsided for the here and now. She left him there to rest, but not before she rescued his scuffed revolver from its holster and took it with her to the chair. Gave her something to focus on what weren’t whether his chest would rise after it fell with the exhalation. Sadie’d oft found comfort in the needs that came in the cleaning of a gun and his’d taken a beating enough that that’d keep her occupied a fair few hours.


	4. Chapter VII: Van Horn Trading Post - 03: Nightfall's Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They've not found full safety in Van Horn, their trail tracked down by one both know; faced by the risks of being discovered further, Sadie starts to piece together a plan to get them out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

The evening crawled by, slow and quiet enough to hold her calm; there were a ruckus what passed through town, but when no one came to beat the door down, she assumed it miners down from Annesberg to spend their pay in or on the local attractions. Secure in the room, Sadie cleaned the mud and grit from Arthur’s gun, the rag turned filthy by the end and gun oil half spent, then worked on her own for a time. Running again meant she’d like as not be relying on it to serve up safety, security, and monies if they ran low. All she had were a hundred left, tucked safe at the bottom of her saddlebags; good money, but only a week of survival if it had to feed, shelter, and secure two of them. Less, if what doctor she found charged a premium to care for one so ill.

Once more did Elizabeth stop at the room, bringing a fresh pitcher of cold water and a bowl of stew fallen half cold after the trek from the saloon. Sadie let her in, let her help rouse Arthur and feed him the broth of it, watched as the girl fussed about how his face burned hot with the fever. He fought her some, called out Dutch’s name, and cursed Micah’s in a low, angry growl that started sounding dangerous. She sent the girl off then, lest he start struggling like some wild animal in his delirium and mistook her for a threat as he fought the nightmares it brought on.

Rain started up soon after that and the heavy thrum of it on the roof seemed to calm him some, in addition to the laudanum she gave him after Elizabeth left. Sadie woke the fire with fresh wood as the rain’s damp chill started to eke through the air, closed the window’s small opening, and shifted the chair closer to the flames so that she might catch the warmth before it set into her bones. Shady Belle had humidity plenty to make its heat insufferable, but Beaver Hollow’d been damp and the nights cold near the whole time they’d hid up there. She’d grown a dislike of that insatiable chill it could set upon her, so different from the crisp cold of winter she’d known up at her ranch.

Left with few devices to occupy her once the guns were cleaned and no desire to think too long on what they’d do after the stage ride on the morrow, she loosened her hair from its braid and combed her fingers through it, feeling the grime built up there and thinking that her first want after all their needs were met would be a hot bath with fresh soap before her hair turned dark with mud and grease. Most of the knots worked out with half-focused effort and she’d leaned forward to work at the ends, where they knotted up the worst, when she heard it. That heartbeat when the roof’s rainy song ceased, replaced by one soft sound; a footfall, her instincts warned with a surge of wariness come over her.

When it happened again, she stopped her hands and listened, hair half fallen over her face and hiding her expression as she glanced at the door, but no shadowed feet stood beyond the narrow glimpse at its base. Arthur remained asleep, calmer than he’d been and all too unaware of the world going on about him. Mindful that she were the one with sense enough to secure them both, she drew her revolver slow and careful.

No clear danger manifested on her cautious scan of the room, but for the glimmer of light and shadow that played on the window. Eyes drawn that way, she saw that the heavy drops of rain had been partially blocked from the panes and she could make out the form of a person standing, unlit and staring in. How it were possible, she’d no mind to question; she’d checked it earlier in the day, the ledge only a foot’s width from the wall, but here were one challenging balance to stand there. Sadie knew she had all of a breath before whomever it was realized she’d seen them and she made sure that breath was spent to line up her gun with the body out there. She stood, sure her weapon’d been seen by the raising of an arm to show no gun in return, the other out of view. Likely holding the frame to keep the perch, but she approached with the readiness that it could well be armed.

Closer she stepped, free hand pushing back the hair from her eyes so’s she could garner a better look at the comer as the shadows slowly peeled back to give form and features she recognised. The low, uncertain murmurings of fear to the unknown fell silent and she holstered her gun again, reached out to unlatch the window and pull it inwards to give entrance. “Charles Smith, you’d’ve given any other soul a heart attack standing here,” she admonished, stepped back to give him space to enter. “As it were, I nearly shot you anyway.”

Charles smiled, brief and rueful, before he took a careful step on the ledge, then hooked his leg over the sill and stepped inside. The rain’d soaked him thorough and dripped from his clothes and the leather saddlebags hung over his shoulder to splatter here and there on the wood planks, but he’d no complaints to it as she closed up the window and latched it tight again, even risked a glance outside first to make sure no other fools’d tried the route to follow him. “Good to see you alive, Mrs. Adler.” Weren’t much more than a careful greeting, but they’d not been much more than careful acquaintances the past few months. Arthur’d rode with him a half year before, from what she’d heard, and seemed to trust him deeper than most. Sadie’d learned to be careful about her trust, though, and Charles’s manner were withdrawn, not outgoingly loud like Uncle, so he’d never pushed her on it. Their understanding had been a generally quiet one, though she’d admit to laughing a fair few times when he’d shot down some others’ attempts at engaging him in conversation.

“I bet there’s plenty out here that’d disagree,” she sent back with a nod. Warning some of trust, that being let in were a risk she’d taken on the back of their quiet understanding and Arthur’s good words spoken of Charles now and again. Van der Linde gang members were suspect to her at this point, it not always clear which side of the loyalty split they fell on. He’d like as not be on Arthur’s, all indicators being he had a good sort of morality about him, but she were overly careful. Protective, even, having taken on care of Mr. Morgan as it were; she’d expose herself to risk, but not him until he’d had some recovery to him and could fire back if someone set bullets on him.

This all filled the break, the moment when they ought have said more for all what they’d been through, but it passed in an uneasy silence as he waited, patient, for her judgement on whether he’d stay or be told to go.

“Thought you was up with Rains Fall and them folk after the hell we raised,” Sadie said, pushing them somewhere safer for talking and figuring out whereabouts their understanding’d fall now. Routes travelled, enemies fought; these were safe things for the here and now. Heavier matters would need discussion too, but this’d serve to give them grounds to start upon.

“I was. We had a rider come down from the north that talked of a hundred or more Pinkertons deployed to take out a gang hidden on the Ridge,” Charles replied. “They’d ignored the Murfees for years, so I figured Dutch and the others were the target. Rode out to warn everyone, but everything had already blown up by the time I reached the Hollow.” There, brief and subtle, he checked the bed, though she imagined he’d seen Arthur from outside already. Questions burned as they went unsaid and she didn’t offer up the explanations so easy. He looked at her, quiet intensity focused on her expression and, no doubt, her next few reactions. “What happened up there?”

“A rat happened,” Sadie said, voice thick and harsh with disdain. This she could and would speak to with unbridled venom in each word. “Goddamn Micah Bell’d been feeding Milton with all what he needed to track us down at each corner. Once the Cornwall mess show’d we’d not stop causing a ruckus, the two of them brought everything else crashing down.” A raw, bitter pain surfaced as she recounted it and it was a sensation she’d not expected to feel; half a year with the gang, all but forced along by circumstance, and she’d figured she could walk away without guilt. Turned out that some of them meant more to her than they ought, Arthur being the crux of it.

Charles let her have that, seemed to know more happened beneath the words than she let on. He nodded and though his focus did not drift from her, she knew he to be living that moment of realization same as she had, though different in circumstance. Inscrutable at all times as he were, she didn’t try to assign emotions to it, only let him have that moment in return. “They had cleared out by the time I reached camp, and they left a mess in their wake,” he reported. “I found Miss Grimshaw, shot and left dead up there.” He stopped, the sound of the water dripping off his riding leathers all that broke the moment. “Buried her the best that I could before I tracked Arthur’s trail back through the caves and out onto the mountain.”

Sadie nodded, trusting at least in those words; she’d had a real time trying to find anything up there, but Charles knew how to follow the slightest clues to track anything. Arthur’d mentioned more than once that his own skills were rightly leeched off of Charles’s patient teachings. “Then you’d’ve found Buell,” she ventured, stepping back to give him the space to get some measure of settled in the room. She gestured to the chair she’d been using, set over by the fireplace, and he nodded after only the briefest pause, moving over to take it, warm his hands by the flames and dry himself some.

“I did,” came heavier, sombre in the loss of the horse. Arthur hadn’t ridden Buell long, but he’d been attached to him for all he didn’t speak to where he’d acquired the beast; beautiful pale coat and mane that she could only recall being stained by the blood and the mud where he lay. “The Pinkertons left him for the scavengers and they left a track that an idiot could follow in their haste. Followed it through a bunch of corpses, then found Arthur’s trail again, with only two other sets of prints, but I never found him.” Here he paused, a careful and clear look to the bed. “Now I see why.”

She shrugged and moved over nearer the door, leaned herself against the wall; there were a message to it, that she stood somewhere between Arthur and where Charles sat, but Sadie’d the aim to preserve what she’d done to this point. Possessive, maybe, but after all what’d slipped away from her, she weren’t letting go so easy. “I couldn’t leave him,” she said, a flat and simple way of explaining the dozen or so brash decisions that had seen her up the mountain to fight off Satan’s intentions. “Damn fool’d never leave one of us behind,” came easier, like she could blame Arthur for her convictions on him, “but I guess he thought he could preach it, but not have us practice it.” Sadie picked these words carefully, to make clear that her decision were not one she’d regret, nor tolerate judgement on.

“My money would be on Arthur not counting on your resolve overpowering his,” Charles almost chuckled there, a hint of some past challenge or memory; it faded quick and look away, the pleasant comfort of it lost.

“Ain’t no one going to tell me who I can or cannot go and help,” she said, a touch of venom in her words. She’d stood by in the past, even been forced aside or into hiding; she’d no mind to ever be in that position again.

“I’m not here to question that,” he soothed, hands spread a little wider over the fire, as though in surrender to the sentiment. Charles quieted for a bit, gathering his thoughts and words together; this were more than she’d mostly heard from him in a single sitting, almost a challenge to maintain, but there were more he needed to bring to light, it seemed. “It’s that he may be past helping,” This burdened him to say, his shoulders slumped even slightly with that unseen weight.

Sadie felt a helpless anger rouse at that, salt rubbed into the worried wound that he were right and she’d done all this to buy him a few hours and a different grave. “You’re thinking he’s as sick as dead?” she raised her voice in challenge, desperate maybe to hear someone else say she’d gone about this for nothing and tell her that she weren’t a fool for trying. “Don’t dance about it with me, Charles, it ain’t a fit.” she added, stepping away from the wall and towards the bed. Arthur had shifted some at her change in tone and she could see the fever’s sweat risen again. She picked up her bandana from before and rinsed it in the cool water Elizabeth’d brought by earlier, used that to wipe away the heat before it smothered him.

“Arthur is not the sort to show his weakness,” Charles said, a softer tactic rich with logic, and a better knowledge of the man than she’d admit to herself having. “For him to get like this? That’s a long illness. It exacts a heavy toll.” The intimation there that there’d be little left to draw on to survive and even less for any sort of recovery.

“You think I don’t got that running through my head already?” She near threw the cloth in the water, near splashed it onto the nightstand around it with her frustration. “Like I’ve gone and made him suffer by doing it?” Sadie laughed, only it caught firm in her throat and lodged around the thickness built up there. She rested her hands, fists clenched firm, on the nightstand and looked back towards Charles. “It ain’t something he’d give up on us over.” She gritted her teeth after each word, set her jaw stubborn as she looked back to Arthur, frighteningly frail after all he’d spent to save them. All sorts of things were gone and slipped away and she drew the line here. “I ain’t giving up. There ain’t much from that gang what I’d consider worth saving. Damn me if you want for thinking he’s one of them.”

Quiet stretched between them and she refused to turn back. Charles always were more the sort to think before speaking and this pause spoke firm to that. She could hear the shift on the chair, a few soft steps taken with caution, a hand reached out to rest on her shoulder. Commiseration, maybe, or a gesture to support her. Agree with her. Placate her.

Sadie knew her eyes were burning and knew it to be a rage of tears what wanted to fall. All this – every last thing stolen, shot, and wrested from her time and again this year - built up and crashed down and her without the heart to take it all and over again. Maybe she’d learn to stop trying one of these times, but that weren’t yet. Damn but she would commit to this path and try, once more, to keep something before it were taken from her.

“Arthur is lucky, then,” he said, low and caution like she were some skittish horse, “to have your friendship.”

That shored her up some and pushed down the acidic sting of tears. She took a fortifying breath and nodded. “He’ll curse me for it,” she said, glancing over her shoulder to Charles with a weak, half-smile. “Already has.”

Charles let his hand drop down, stepping back so that she could turn and lean back up on the nightstand. An eyebrow went up, the tilt of his head asking the unspoken question, or extending the invitation, for details.

“He was awake, for a bit,” she granted, gesturing to Arthur. The wheeze of his breath were quieter now, the movement of his chest with it hard to discern in its shallowness. She’d acquired a sense for it this past day, knowing to look for the tint of blue on his lips that were now flushed away to the pale cast. “Asked about Marston. Real focused on whether he got away.” She shrugged, looked over to Charles who, in turn, had focused his attention on the broken man.

“And?” Expectation did not stain his voice, instead a gentle pressure for details to ease the mind.

Sadie thought on that, careful. Arthur’d trusted her to get them out when all else started to shatter; he’d chosen to damn himself and placed on her his final hopes that Abigail and Jack might survive this hell. Were it right to speak to that, even to Charles? Micah’d been the rat through and through, but his treachery’d burned her already scarred trust and she weren’t keen on making mistakes again. She wanted to trust Charles, to rely on what she’d seen and heard from Arthur, but it were raw now and she’d no mind to risk things any more stupidly than she’d done so far.

“They got out,” she finally allowed, though she felt cagey about how much detail to give. “Out and in hiding. Marston promised Arthur that he’d do it and I expect he will, otherwise I’ll give him hell myself. They got what they need to disappear too; got Arthur’s satchel, most of his cash.”

“Good.” Charles nodded and stepped away, slinging the saddlebags off his shoulder to rest on the ground. This he kneeled beside, working the straps to open them; they’d seen better days, leather filthy and torn in places. She recognised them from Buell’s kit, but barely. “You’ll both need to disappear too,” he noted. “The Pinkertons may have gone for now, but he’s still a rich bounty in the eyes of the law. And with Micah feeding Milton, there’s nothing saying he’d not make trouble for you both.”

“Milton’s dead,” Sadie said, no love lost for that pain in their past. “Abigail shot him not a half mile from here, so Micah can try all he wants, but he’ll be fucked by a donkey before he gets in my way again.” Deadly promise there, for all of the agony she’d visit on him for what he’d done when next their paths crossed. Damn anyone what said vengeance were a luxury one couldn’t afford; she’d make sure to afford this in generous detail.

This did not startle him, only earned a slow nod of understanding. Maybe he had heard so much already that he were overwhelmed by it, or maybe it was just that calm of his. Either case, he took it in stride and started to pull and sort out the contents of the saddlebags. “This will be different,” he cautioned. “Dutch lost track of his sanity, we know that now, but he kept everyone safe for as long as he could. I rode alone a long time before I met him and it’s not easy.”

“Don’t you worry about us,” she said, guarded. “I can run. Dutch taught me that much.” She’d a dry bitter taste any time she used that name, struggled to understand how a man so vehement about loyalty and family could have fallen so far. She shook her head, clearing it. “And I can shoot, which I’ve known most of my life. I aim to employ both to keep use alive.”

Charles leaned back on his heels, observing her quietly. “I know,” he agreed, gesturing for her to join him, “but you’ll both benefit from what’s left from Buell.”

Sadie came over, feeling a pang of regret for not thinking to go back Arthur’s horse, shot dead on the mountainside. Focused on getting Arthur out and alive had taken her whole being to attain, gear and supplies things that hadn’t yet occurred to her. She knelt across from him, looked over the few cans of food, boxes of ammunition, and unlabelled tinctures mostly laid out.

“The guns were gone,” Charles explained, pulling next a couple packs of cigarettes, some bits of food wrapped in papers. Parts were dented, others crushed, yet some unscathed after it all. “The Pinkertons must have cleared them out before they left.”

“Of course they did,” she said, the words choked out amidst sharp, angry shards like glass caught in her throat. “They’s as honest as the O’Driscolls, only they get paid government money to steal from folk like us.”

A somber truth that he did not contest. “The government’s often removed from the execution of its will,” Charles stated, tone flat. He’d know all too well that truth. His unfaltering support of Rains Fall and his own complex heritage exposed the systemic flaws clearer to him than most. Dutch had taken advantage of those flows, exploited them for his gain, not all that different from Leviticus Cornwall by justifying the means to being the tool towards an end and not a cruel legacy.

Charles let that go with the barest shake of his head, digging back into the bags. “Arthur’s distrust towards the end served you both here,” he said, looking into the dark pockets as he worked at something within. “There’s a trick I’ve seen to have an extra pocket stitched or tied in at the bottom of the saddlebag.” He pulled out a small parcel from within, thin laces dangling free, and gave her a brief, grim smile.

This, turned out on the floor, give her a sharp and painful insight into how long Arthur had been hiding some part of himself, secreting it away to pay, maybe, for John’s chance at free living. Bills of cash, spread out on the planks, amounted to almost five hundred and there were some fancy rings and bits of gold that any fence would pay good money for. “Oh, Arthur,” she said, soft. That he’d the need pressing him to hide so much amidst his stated family shouted real loud how much hurt his loyalty’d earned him.

Quiet moments passed, each of them appreciating how much Arthur had witnessed and done since... Colm? Guarma. Since finding out he were sick as bad as he were. “He would have used this to disappear,” Charles pointed out, “if not for what happened.”

Sadie looked it over again, hands up and pushing her hair back from her face so that she could get a better measure of it. This, with her own funds, would give them a few weeks of room and board, cover off some cost of gear to replace what’d been lost with the camp, even get Arthur medicine that might actually mend what went foul in his lungs. It’d get them both out and off the Ridge, that much were clear, and she could use it to dissuade any what took too much interest in their passing. “Then that’s what we do,” she decided with a slow nod, meaning coming together in her head. “Arthur’s done more than anyone had right to demand of him and he don’t deserve to be made to give more. It’s only right we let him disappear for good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELP. Hello again! Two chapters this week and I've hit a stride on how to translate my chicken scratch into (mostly) legible words. Twelve handwritten pages turned into four chapters (counting the interlude as the first); math time! At 88 pages left in this notebook and 150 written in the next, that makes for... Many chapters. Time to get started on typing up next week's instalment(s)! I aim for a minimum of one chapter per week, as a heads up. Check out my twitter (KichiWhy) for updates and many complaints about how Word hates thematic grammar. Later, y'all!


	5. Chapter VII: Van Horn Trading Post - 04: A Grave Lie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The obvious solution may lead to a matched conclusion, but it gives Sadie and Charles an avenue to pursue that might yet set Arthur free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

The idea that Sadie worked on, grown fast and sure in her thoughts, took what had happened and pushed it towards what they needed to get done, what they needed to become to make it more than concept. She shifted her position, moved to sit cross-legged on the floor with her arms rested on her knees, hands moving back and forth in short, quick movements as she spoke. “Easiest course is go with what people already think,” she started, gesturing to Arthur. “Marston told me he’d all but shot him again to get him to run, that the Pinkerton’s were like as not to get him in the end. That he’d die out there, well. It ain’t far from the truth.” Or that Arthur’d make sure they got a corpse; John’d looked ill at that, but knew the threat of hanging well enough to know why a man kept the last bullet for himself when he ain’t got any sane way out.

“There were few traces of him leaving the Hollow,” came Charles’s careful agreement, once he’d taken some moments to process the idea, and the challenges it’d bring. The grief that some would feel, to find that Arthur Morgan had died.

Them words caught her a moment, stalled the plan as she looked his way. “Yeah,” she said, faint, nearing thoughtful. Then, with the determination to find out: “How’s it you found us so fast then?” she asked. “I figured that with all them Pinkertons mucking up the roads, my route’d be lost if I kept to their mess.”

Charles had that faint and enigmatic smile of his, like there were a bit of humour only he could quite make out in the moment. “You were hard to find, but a few too many traces that I could see,” he confessed, though it weren’t no surprise if she’d put thought to it. “I found where Arthur made his stand, the marks of the fight, but there wasn’t blood or a body left there. If the Pinkertons had gotten him, I’d have found one or both. I did find two sets of prints leaving, but neither matched his boots. That told me that he got out, somehow.” He lined up the cash in simple denominations, small piles that amounted to their best chance at surviving. “I went for the nearest place he could’ve holed up in. Annesberg is too deeply rooted in Murfee territory and it’s a mine town. Anyone that doesn’t work in the mine sticks out like a sore thumb. But, Van Horn? It’s the kind of place a degenerate,” this with that same half-smile, “can hole up in for a day or so without being noticed. Figured that if anything had happened, I might hear about it at the saloon.” Drunk folk tended to talk long and loud about the slightest things, she could attest to that sure enough after the stories she’d heard around the campfire on the nights the alcohol poured most freely. “Folk were talking about the Pinkertons and how the story they’ve run is that they came for the Murfees; claimed it was to serve justice for that young girl we found in the caves when we first took the Hollow. Nothing about Dutch or the others.”

She pressed her lips to a thin line, mood soured. “Course they did,” she said with a bitter laugh. “Real noble and effective of them. Must’ve needed something to show back home after Dutch killed their ‘boss’ Cornwall.” Yet one more screaming sign that his mental state had deteriorated beyond salvation, yet still so many stayed despite it. “Gives them something to polish their reputation right up and make folk forget about what they actually done.” Typical, she’d been learning, of too many folk; appearances and reputation were worth their weight in gold and no matter how foolish to maintain them, folk would.

“This gave them reason to start back north,” he cautioned, sharing with her that dose of too accurate common sense. “Puts more space between you and their laws.”

“Don’t mean I have to appreciate how them lying sacks of shit done it,” she snapped. The words were meant to hurt, but he remained inscrutable while she were the one feeling the sting of lashing out at the first one that were helping them both since this started. “Sorry,” she ceded, sorting through the precious tokens that had likely as not been taken from corpses along the way. “Ain’t been stopped for more than a few hours since you went up to the reservation and makes it hard to keep the tongue from getting away worse than usual.”

Charles watched her for a long, silent moment before, finally, she heard the murmur of a laugh, soft, understanding, and brief. “You’ve no need to apologize to me,” he said, eyebrow quirked up as an apologetic sort of smile teasing at his mouth. He cleared his throat quick, focused back to the tenuous matter at hand. “Anyways. After I made it here, the trail ran dry until a few hours ago,” he continued, like they hadn’t stepped off topic there. “One of the girls there mentioned stepping out to take food out to the Adlers.”

Damn. Sadie winced, the hindsight making it painful clear that this weren’t the most deceptive guise to use, for all the ease she’d had in plying it. “Guess I should’ve used some other name,” she figured on, turning over a sapphire ring in her fingers.

“Few people know of Sadie Adler around here,” he returned, a soothing balm to her hasty choices. “Your likeness never wound up on bounties. Dutch never had you lead any of the jobs either.” A congenial shrug as he stacked the money together and folded it back into the hideaway pouch. “It’s safer than most of our names these days. Here.” He handed it to her so that she could put the jewellery away until she found a worthwhile fence for it. Not the one in Van Horn, for he’d likely recall the woman what charged into his shop amid Milton’s hostage situation with Abigail. “This should get you and your ‘husband’ clear of all this.”

Sadie found herself about able to smile at that, a bit lop-sided and relieved. Grateful, truth told, that he could be giving after months of watching people do nothing but take, herself included. “Thank you, Charles,” she said; honest and open for that moment, she came near to trusting him and that were more than most could hope for.

He did not laud it, nor dwell on it, neither being of an action kin to him. Instead, his mind went back to the business at hand and he nodded. “I’ll ride back in the morning and bury Buell,” he suggested, stacking the bits and pieces from the saddlebags together. “Then I’ll take care of the few traces that Arthur left alive. And,” he stopped sudden, like it were a spread of broken glass that needed crossing, options working quick, “I’ll give him a grave, somewhere the sun’d find him.” A sombre reflection, like he were about to see to final wishes. “The kind of place he’d want. The sort of thing that folk’ll believe when word gets up.”

There was a morbidity to talking of a burial for a man not dead, but death were the best way to disappear when law and luck both wanted your head. Death’d be what they needed the world to believe had happened to Arthur, if they’d any chance of getting him safe and keeping him that way.

Sadie nodded, warmed to the idea. If Arthur were buried, of a sort, in sight and thought, then getting him out’d be easier on account of few knowing to chase him. “Do that, Charles,” she agreed, “and thank you for that.” It made sense to her with the pieced put together that this would be the course to take. Arthur might be the sort to disagree, but he weren’t in a state to make decisions what needed to be made and fast. She’d bear the brunt of that if he hated this and she were at peace with that. “Neither of us talks of it and no one’ll know,” she added. “Though I ain’t promising he won’t once- if he gets his senses back.”

That spectre of death still lurked and all, with no books or laws saying that Arthur would recover; this grave lie could we become a truth if the tuberculosis won out. Sadie looked at Charles, thinking how much the risk’d be to get information to him if the death turned to truth, and how much he’d earned the right to know it by being one to stand with him, even when Arthur couldn’t stand himself. “I’ll send word through the reservation if my husband here don’t make it,” she added. Using the term here, with someone what knew the truth of its lie, made it an awkward play for how easy she’d started with it. Part of her spiked a worry through her thoughts, that if Arthur died that’d make her twice a widow, this husband false or not.

That thought of loss, brief and potent, came up too real and sharp for her to want to face it then and so she left Charles to the spoils, but for the small pouch of money and valuables that she carried to her own saddlebags, pushing it down deep in the pocket to keep it secure. Her eyes fell to the half-finished plate of fish and potatoes Elizabeth brought by earlier in the day; after a thought, she picked it up and brought it back to where Charles had stood, moved closer to the fire to chase off the damp that still held firm to his clothes. “Here,” she offered, holding it out. “Local fare, ain’t half bad.”

Charles took it with a grateful nod, sat down as he started eating it. “Where’ll you head?” Straightforward question asked between bits, but it carried with it a less straightforward answer.

“Booked passage on a morning stage,” she said with a shrug. Sadie picked up a few of the cans of food, dented and not, from the floor and moved to store them in the saddlebags what weren’t rent and ruined. “Headed west, towards Emerald Station.”

“Winter’ll come soon,” he remarked, looking to the fire and the warmth what radiated from it, stark contrast to what the weather’d be bringing as the year wound closer to its end. “Have you thought about heading south? Could be better for the cough, keeping it away from the cold air.”

None of her plans had made it that far, skimming best along the next twelve or twenty-four hours at most. What he said made sense, when she considered it, and Emerald Station connected with some of the southern lines that could get them far from Roanoke Ridge and fast. “Maybe,” she said, shifting the contents of the bag about to make it all fit before she went back to pick up the battered cigarettes and other bits. “Saint Denis ain’t the south I’d like, though,” she warned, sharp and sudden. Talk of going back there, no matter the civilization of it promising a good doctor, turned sour on her tongue before she could’ve spit it out. Too hot and too humid, for the one. The rest? Too much of Dutch’s crazed descent was laid out in the cobbled streets and alleys.

“No.” His firm agreement echoed the sentiments and soothed her instincts some, reassuring that her take on it weren’t all off kilter or brash. “Too many people. You’ll want to get away from everything you can. The less familiar it is, the safer you’ll both be.”

Assuming they stuck together once Arthur got a measure of strength back; Sadie weren’t deluding herself that he’d be happy with what she’d done. Rarely was, when she went and made the decisions, often violent and short-sighted, without real consideration to the cost. Full expected him to hate her if he needed to, because she’d done it for the selfish take of not wanting to lose a chance, even thinner than a thread, that she might save the one man she’d come to figure worth saving in all this. All she needed were him to survive; curse her for it and chase her off all he thought to after, but first to survive. That’d be his biggest challenge.

-

Saint Denis.

Arthur heard that amidst the shuffle and muted conversation of those that seemed to circle about him, vultures of a sort circling their prey? No. He’d no sense of danger, no feel like the noose were looped about his neck and ready to snap tight. But the city’s name, uttered once, were one he’d heard one too many times already.

Saint. _Fucking._ Denis.

It called him out, his fingers itching for a gun what could shot that damn place out of his life, and his death for that matter. Living hell it’d been, dust and shadows shrouding the corruption of man when at its greatest concentration. Bronte pulling strings and Dutch all but ready to dance, their desperation run deep after they cut their losses in Rhodes, burned out the Braithwaites, and turned south with increasingly foolhardy goals. Foul leads and rough jobs hunted them with the same fervor that Milton did, stalked their every move until, one by one, they were losing folk faster than they could track.

There, too, the first time he’d been forced to face the bloody cough, his mortality writ near as done when the doctor said he might survive if he’d but rest. Ha. Second to Dutch van der Linde, or so he fooled himself, meant accepting then that it were straight to the grave that he’d ride. No rest for the wicked, of which he were a prime subject.

Anger, hot with that hell’s indignity, pushed him up out of the dark again; frustration, stained with the helplessness he’d felt as consumption consumed him, fuelled it to new heights. Pressure built in his chest to bursting, or near as much, and he gasped for air that weren’t wont to come.

Goddamn sickness. Goddamn doctor. Goddamn Saint Denis. Goddamn everything!

Arthur heard his coughing start like some hollow echo and he braced himself, dammed himself from the pain that came with it. Heavy and clumsy, he dragged his hand onto his chest to claw at it, like he might tear some new way to breathe in through his skin. Throat felt like it would collapse in on itself, wheezing loud amidst the blood that rushed in his ears. Mucus built up and choked at him and his fingers scratched at his neck to ease it. He had the sense of lying somewhere, soft and hot, and the weight of his cough dragged him down, but he fought it. Tried to turn onto his side that he might spit out what ailed him, tried to right himself so he’d not suffocate on it. Air whistled and wheezed as he grasped at anything he could reach for purchase, strength hardly enough to hold him there. Sounds broke through between his coughs, the clatter of something skidding over a wooden floor. Confusion at the voices, clearer than the last, not being those of the grim dreams that chased him.

“Charles, let me.” No nonsense and quick. Sadie Adler’s voice and then suddenly Sadie herself with her hands to his shoulders to pull him up, shift him to the side so that his coughing could drag the thick fluids up and out, spit them to the floor. Her weight next to him, hand steadying his head so he’d not have to. It’d be humiliating, had he the strength to do it himself; as it were, desperation for the sweetness of air let him take a comfort in it.

Then a voice raised in counter, a second to argue a point that he made no sense out of. Arthur couldn’t stop coughing long enough to hear the details, nor focus on it to care.

“I already been all around his coughing, Charles.” Tense, but certain; Sadie’s words were clearer, spoken nearer to him. “No sense in you risking this sickness when I’m fine about it.” He could feel her arms braced around him, holding him there as the coughing started to subside. Shadowy motes started to seep from his sense of things and he came to realize he heard her because it were her chest he’d been propped against. The words were easier to make out this close, no straining to pull them out of air that muffled them with distance. He felt one of her hands on his face, pushing away his hair, grown long from weeks and months on the run, to tuck it aside almost without intention.

“I _aim_ ,” she were saying, voice sharp while she clarified some counter to the argument, “to do what we’ve said to do. You know well as me that Arthur’s a big part of why I ain’t dead in a cellar. Dutch’s folk helped some, but it ain’t the same; they all knew I’m a dead woman walking. What if I get sick then? Already had my time and more ‘cause of all this. I ain’t bothered if it comes to end.”

His sense of time slipped, throwing him back to that cold mountain and then dragging him here to this room. Scared, screaming Adler; like some wildcat spitting with her eyes wide and murder clear her intent while Micah chased her about the table. Dutch calmed her then, promised her safety; Arthur’d felt that fell on him just as much, that her life come under his care now.

Cold, wet cloth touched his hot skin and he sucked in a breath, snapped back to the present and latched himself best he could to the here and now. Sadie again, grabbed it from somewhere – where were they? – and used it to clean away the sweat, wipe off the spittle that dripped slow off his cracked lips. He felt a spectator to his circumstance as, bit by bit, some parts of his mind and body came back to him as his breathing started to even out again.

“Get me that cup,” her voice spoke again. The shuffle of footsteps and she shifted, lifted him closer to upright, to sitting. A cold tin cup held against his lips and he could feel the cool relief of water touch his mouth. “Drink this, Arthur,” were her order and he’d not much protest, the water slaking a thirst he’d ignored, washing away some of the iron tang of blood as he drank it down. He found himself grabbing the cup, pushing it up to drain it faster. Emptied all too soon, he wheezed against the tin lip of the cup and worked to get his eyes to open, blurred as his vision fought to be. Boots he knew stood nearby while words cut in and out of his perception.

“-food he ate?”

“They brought up stew earlier,” Sadie replied with surety. Then a question and he could almost feel her head shake. “Too much and he’ll not breathe,” she said. “Laudanum’s strong and it’ll trick a fellow into thinking he don’t need to live no more. Lost a cousin that way.”

“Rains Fall sent-“ The voice tapered out of his hearing, boots moving away with purpose. Arthur knew those boots still and it were starting to piece together in his mind. Then they were back and a hand entered his line of sight, a few bottles with a familiar cloudy liquid held out. “It quiets the cough and wakes the lungs, he said.”

Certainty. Confidence in the wisdom imparted by Rains Fall. Boots he knew. Name he knew. Took him a few breaths, sluggish and shallow, before his voice found an escape out of the burning ache of his chest. “Charles,” he managed, drawing in another breath, “the hell you doing here?” Gruff and loud these words weren’t, more like gravel crunched under the grindstone, but he got them out. Arthur tried to raise his arm up to wave him off, but it felt like he were stuck in some sort of molasses, thick and heavy.

There came a quiet where all he did were breathe, quick and shallow, to catch back what air he’d expended. Then those boots creased and the wearer knelt down. He could see the tight lines of the braid, the calm look of the survivor; Charles’s eyes, though, looked drawn and haunted. “Helping, friend,” he said, hands rested on knees as he crouched where Arthur could see him. “How are you feeling?”

“I- Fine,” he said, dismissive. “Ain’t nothing.” The words cut out, blocked by another fit of coughing so violent that the edges of his vision dimmed and turned red, threatened to fade away altogether.

“That’s more than he’s done since we got in.” Sadie’s voice again, rich with a relief he couldn’t equate with what’d happened, where they’d ended up. Her weight and warmth were reassuring against him, though some point of pride wanted to leave off it, brace himself without help. He couldn’t find the strength then to make it happen, nor the care to do more than piece together what came out about him.

“I’m fine,” he tried again, words of protest fighting their way out of him.

An uneasy silence and Charles spent it looking over to Sadie, he figured, and they set some accord in motion then he’d no grasp to. “Arthur.” Charles looked straight at him then, an intensity full and focused on what he wanted to say, to not waste words. “I came to help Mrs. Adler get out.” This said slow, clear, and with an urgency that struck chords in him, resonated with that part of him what promised her help back in that snowy night. Charles were trying to trick him, he had some sense of that, but it kicked up a protective urge, an instinct strong from years of doing all he could to keep the gang safe.

“Sadie?” Arthur thought he’d been wary, that Charles were trying to fool him, but the fog thickened in his mind and he’d no light to penetrate it. “She needs out?” The May storm descended over his thoughts and he heard her angry screaming, freed from the cellar and all too ready to strike the first what came at her. His head started to spin, mired in the illness, and he shook his head. “You- Don’t you mind. We’ll keep her safe...” His words trailed off, unfocused. This weren’t Ambarino and no snow lay on the ground, so why’d he think that?

A hand touched his brow, gently testing the heat there. “Fever’s up again.” Sadie were right there, next to him, not the screaming creature what’d lost everything. “Must be muddling him good.” She paused, pushing his hair, thick with sweat, back again. “Arthur.” She moved her hand to his chin, lifting his head so she could look him in the eye. Most of the room stood indistinct and blurred, hard to follow, but he could see her face. Her eyes. There shone a genuine concern there and it made all his anger and frustration break a moment against it. “You have to stop fighting the sleep,” she pleaded calm, like how she’d asked him to ride out and finish the O’Driscolls once and for all. “You’ve got to get through this.”

Arthur stared at her a long time, the words fragmented and difficult to process. Felt a surge of shame, almost, for her needing to ask him. The rage, something what’d protected him oft before, didn’t wake again and he felt the fight drain from him. “Okay,” he heard himself say, the words tripping over his tongue. “Okay.”

Sadie Adler, who let him guide her out of a hellish storm and allowed him to help her when all her world had collapsed about her, needed him and he’d no stomach to tell her no. It made a strange sense, instead, that he ought do it. Dutch had no need of him after what Micah’d twisted him to. But here? Sadie Adler, strongest woman he’d yet met, weren’t the sort to ask things of him lightly so maybe all he could do were his best to try, to stop ignoring the exhaustion that kept dragging him to distraction, and get some rest.

-

Less an effort than it’d yet been to get Arthur back to sleeping, laying him down with the blanket drawn up to his chest. The struggle in him faded, the grimace what drew deep lines in his brow lessened as he stopped fighting that need to sleep. Maybe his body could work at healing now, to mend itself some in bits and pieces without wasted effort to wake and speak. The idea of it gave her a sense of relief, like he stood a chance despite it all.

Sadie stayed perched on the edge of the bed another half hour or more, rinsing out the cloth time and again so that she could wipe away the fever’s sweat the deeper that he fell into slumber. She focused on the shadows that darkened his eyes, bruised from exhaustion and the constant pressure he’d put on them whenever he tried to rub away the sleep he spent so long running from. His whole visage were frighteningly fragile and she’d no taste for it. Strong and sure Arthur, stubborn to the last and ready to shout or mutter complaints when things went south? That she’d take in spades. This paper-thin rendition, though? It gave her chills to see.

Charles had taken over stowing the rest of the supplies he’d laid out in her saddlebags, stopping near the fire now and again to chase off the damp chill as his gear continued to dry. “Get some sleep,” he suggested quietly, settling himself in the chair by the fire once it were done.

She looked over to him, chair positioned to draw heat from the flames while leaving his sightlines to the door and window clear. There was a tomahawk held light and sure in his hand, threat clear only to those that might cross him. “Nah,” she said, fighting the yawn that stole up on her. The few hours of sleep in the day hadn’t shored her up, days on end stitched together without rest raising calls that she ought listen while she could still make sense of the offer; of Charles being there to watch them both before they split off once more.

“Sleep a few hours,” seemed his insistence on it, solemn and true. “I’ll wake you then to switch the watch.” He stretched back his shoulders, ran his thumb along the shaft of his tomahawk. “I’ll head north after you two get on that coach, like we said.” He watched her and she’d the sense that all her shouting and stubborn lies weren’t about to shift his position on this, proven by his next words: “You need the rest. I can’t go further and he’ll need you awake.”

Strange thing to hear, Arthur needing anything but Dutch’s passionate leadership, or the gang’s close ties; these being all things since taken from him. What he had left were Sadie, new and unpredictable, but needed in the absence of all that. “Fine,” she ceded, rinsing the cloth a last time and laying it, cool and damp, on his brow to soak the heat. She didn’t move far, rising only to settle on the ground with her back against the bed. Ready and like to be awoken if Arthur caught up another cough or needed some other intervention to keep him resting. “But you make sure to wake me, Charles Smith,” she warned, threat enough in her tone without the need to elaborate on it. He’d seen her fight, had a better insight to the fiery anger what burned inside and wouldn’t need no picture book to make sense of it.

“I will,” he promised. Charles, serious and sincere, ain’t ever lied to her in a way she’d caught it, so maybe that were why she could feel her resistance to the pull of sleep fading, a sense of security underlying it. Faith, almost, that she could leave this to him and grant that tiny sliver of trust from her small reserves of it.


	6. Chapter VII: Van Horn Trading Post - 05: Head Nor Tails

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their plans in motion and the dawn rising sees Arthur awake and struggling to understand why, all while the time counts down to when they must leave to have a chance to escape.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

Four times during the night that they switched off, twice that she awoke to Charles’s gentle touch on her shoulder and she shook off the spectre of sleep to get up, to check on Arthur, who held true to resting the night through, breathing steadier for all its shallow grasp. Second time, she smelled the freshness of coffee and was grateful to see a small tin pot over the fire with it brewed strong. Thanked Charles for it as he settled under the window for his turn at sleep, short and sweet.

Sadie drank deep of the first cup of coffee and poured herself a second to serve as company until dawn rose again. This she savoured, strong without bitterness, as she stood near the door and held a watch. Thoughts moved fast and firm to what they would do once sunlight cast aside the night. Head west with the stage and then where? Rhodes and Saint Denis were sour on them and she knew Blackwater thirsted strong for its bounty on Arthur Morgan. There were some stations along the rails, but they were small and serving remote homesteads who weren’t too friendly to new folk. Living rough’d be fine for her, but much as a death sentence to Arthur in his state. Fleeting, she thought back to her ranch up in the northern reaches of Ambarino, but the hurt of its memory still choked her throat tight. The house burned in her mind, all things left consumed by flames and she’d expect nothing left but the drafty barn, worse for sickened lungs than any camp.

The money they had needed to let them a room and board for at least some few weeks, plus cover off a doctor to see what could be done for Arthur. No charlatan’d do for this, but medical science and that meant some aspect of civilization were needed to secure medicine and care. All them places considered – Rhodes, Saint Denis, and Blackwater – were like to have them, but she’d never pass off someone notorious as him as her ill husband there.

Curses, soft and vicious, slipped free with each breath and she directed them full at the futility of this whole situation. First time in months she had control of her fate, not running from direct threat like all them other times, and she couldn’t much decide what to do about it. Elizabeth’d said the coach ran to Emerald Station and they’d be able to let a room there a time, but it was the planning of after that she couldn’t figure. Never been skilled at looking more than the short days ahead was why they’d run a ranch and not a farm; Sadie’d no aptitude for planning crops and harvests, but skill enough with livestock that made it work for her and Jake, back in the times before this mess.

Last of the coffee drained away and she decided to go with what’d worked this far: Take the stagecoach out to Emerald Station and make the call from there. No point forcing a plan when she’d no mind for it, or no idea if Arthur’d even be healthy enough to go further. Alive enough. Bittered by that thought, she tossed the dregs of the cup on the fire and pushed them thoughts, secondary and all, down. No point planning, she reminded herself; hell tended to raise the stakes higher and higher the more folk thought they’d get the bead on beating it.

-

Stop fighting, Arthur. That’d been her plea, but it weren’t the type of words he knew her for. Sadie’d never been one to give up, nor let him; even half in the grave and determined to fight, she’d given him a rifle and had him run the lighthouse steps to cover her from them damn Pinkerton bastards. Never gave up on getting John out of Sisika either, no matter that it cost an innocent man his life as part of the deal. Surrender weren’t her style to be, nor ask of others.

No, she’d not told him to stop fighting all, only to stop fighting the sleep. Arthur recalled something pressing about it, that she needed him rested for their next job, maybe? No idea what that’d be, after the messy trail of train robberies and bank heists what crumbled to dust in their hands. Couldn’t do worse than that by resting up, making sure his edge were sharp. Alert. So’s he could catch things before they slid sideways as they so often did.

Arthur stopped fighting it then, on her account and not his own. Life’s experiences made it clear long ago that he weren’t made for safe, for himself, but he could do this for others. Others is all he had in the end, because his own self and decisions turned sour more than sweet. Look where they’d taken him, over hell’s half acre and back more times than he could count and nothing to show for it. All his worth got tied up in others because when he took it in hand, it all fell apart.

Sleep, least, came quiet once he did stop, the ache of his lungs subdued and the fever passing to mild. He’d the sense more than once of cool on his face and sweat wiped away, the grasp that it were her hand doing it. Sadie needed him for something, but she were the one keeping him secure in the rest he needed. Charles’s said she needed to get out and it were on him to ensure. Sadie’d needed no one since she’d joined up and he couldn’t quite countenance it. Strong, independent Sadie what tracked down and murdered every O’Driscoll she could with a vicious need. That she’d called on him gave it measure of import, but no. Stop thinking on it, you damn fool. Rest, like you promised.

Nightmare’s what had rattled him awake and coughing muted to shadows playing in the darkness of his mind, indistinct. The burning hell started to recede some as fever loosened its grip on the reins further. His breathing, when he heard its wheeze too often, kept creeping closer to calm and steady. The more he stopped trying to fight it, the deeper he slept.

Sleep, then, seemed maybe the one thing he could do right at last.

-

Dawn’s rise came swift enough after that, this with no more sleep taken or needed by Sadie; she spent the last hour ensuring that her saddlebags were secured with all the supplies, including three small bottles from Rains Fall that were meant to fortify Arthur’s constitution, weakened as it were. Satisfied with that, she braided her hair into its loose plait and fit her hat snug on her head.

Charles woke without her pressing it, took the tin cup of coffee she offered him from the long-brewed pot at the fire he’d first set up. “Morning,” he said after his first bracing mouthful. A grimace at the strength of it, thick after hours of heat; mind, no worse than Pearson’s daily brew had been. “How’s Arthur?”

“Sleeping still,” she replied, glancing over to the bed. Tempted to let him keep at it, leave off the leaving until he woke of his own accord, but the fact that Charles had found them gave her an itch to be moving on before someone of a more unsavoury sort did the same. She crossed her arms low over her stomach, warring brief with the conflict of which’d be safer. “Think it’s right, moving him?” she asked, a shred of doubt manifested and persistent. She’d no taste for it, bitter as it were. If it’d been her alone, the answer were clear that she’d do it in a heartbeat. It was having this responsibility on her, of having to make good on keeping him alive, that came all unnatural to her. Made her start questioning things what ought have been clear for the sake of not dealing him death in a hand already rife with them cards.

“Yes.” No hesitation slowed his words, no uncertainty plagued him; Charles never spoke what he didn’t mean, his statement serving to prove her right. That getting him out were the more important thing, worth risking some chances to recover so long as it earned something secure later. “Opium won’t help for long and Rains Fall’s brews only sustain, not heal. He needs a doctor, some place to recover that’s not damp like this.”

Sadie nodded, took her momentum from his confidence on it. “Right.” She moved over to the bed and reached out, shook Arthur’s shoulder with her hand until he jarred awake. Stared at her, not full seeing where he was or why she were there, groggy with sleep and the laudanum’s lingering hold. His fever’d faded late in the night and contributed less to his confusion, a small grace to their favour, yet not quite enough.

“Wha-?” Disorientation rife in a voice fallen harsh with the grit of disuse, he blinked and looked at her blearily, then to Charles. Caught some shine of recognition, then a grimace from some pain that caught up with him. Arthur groaned and slowly raised his hand up, rubbing at his eyes and then down the length of his face. He started coughing, a watery rattle to it, and he tried to roll to the side, to get air in and she moved reflexively to help reposition him. His reflex, in turn, were to push her back. “I’m fine,” he struggled to say. “Leave off.”

Any comfort she’d found in his having a sense of the goings on around him cooled at his stubborn resistance and she fought the sharpening tongue that tried to lash out at him. Tell him that he’d like as not needed the help and had for the last day. Took a literal biting of her tongue until the ferric hint of blood surfaced to keep that suppressed. “Whatever you say, Mr. Morgan,” she shot back, standing up with her hands raised and clear, giving him space. Patience thin as her temper were short, Sadie grabbed her bandana and shoved it in a pocket. “I’ve got the stage to check on, Charles,” she added, heading to the door. He nodded and seemed understanding that she were trusting him to make sure Arthur survived this bout as she got some air.

Sadie stepped out the room, her irritation with Arthur shifting to a wariness as the town outside it came back to her perception; just over a day spent mostly in that room brought the boundaries of her world inwards to those four walls, easier to keep an eye on and no strangers to add risk. Outside it, though, were folk of all sorts and she’d no idea which’d sell out their mother for a bottle of whiskey over those what’d defend her to their dying breath. Gave her that moment to know that Arthur were about to be the only one she had any measure of, forced her to calm some. To recall that they was re-entering a whole territory of life-and-death trouble and a bit of scuff over a coughing fit weren’t nothing to it.

Didn’t mean she full forgave him for being grumpy about it, just that it made better sense now; she’d give them both a few minutes before she headed back in. Needed a few herself to ease off the annoyance he’d triggered.

Elizabeth’d come halfway up the stairs when she stepped out, glancing to the sides and over the railing at the town for any mote out of place. “Mrs. Adler,” the girl greeted, friendly innocence back at the surface after a night of courting gentlemanly interest.

Sadie finished her survey of the dingy, decrepit view before she nodded a greeting her way. “Morning,” came simple; routine like, scratching the surface and that’d be about it. She kept her hand rested comfortable at her belt, close and quick to draw her gun if something turned out to ruin her day.

“Stage’s downstairs, waiting for you both,” she said, gesturing downwards. “Around back the building, same as your horse is. Driver’s tying the lead right now, so’s you don’t have to leave him behind.” All her manner seemed fine, no nervous ticks or sweats to suggest a lie; she been fair to them both and seemed it were founded in sincerity. It were only being on the precipice of leaving that made her wary, trust a measure she’d rather save for the times and folk what’d need it most.

“That’s decent of you, Elizabeth,” she said with a slow nod. “Ain’t anything you had to make sure on, but I appreciate. So’s my husband, for all he don’t got much to say right now.”

Shake of her head, vehement, and a fervent statement of: “Like I said before, Mrs. Adler. He was always decent with me. Only right to do the same.”

The idea of one good turn deserving another gave her a jaded laugh that Sadie suppressed, too familiar with how things never worked within them rules. Mindful of that, she’d pulled aside a few bills from Arthur’s kit that she pressed into Elizabeth’s hands, insurance of a sort. “Your discretion’s real appreciated, too,” she said, to make it clear that no one ought hear that any Adler’d been through Van Horn Trading Post, should it be asked. That she took the money, secreted it away on her person, made it equal clear that it were understood and would be respected. “You go tell that stagecoach that we’ll be right down,” she added, turning back towards the room so’s she could at least help with getting Arthur down the stairs.

-

Felt all too soon that Arthur had the sensation of a hand at his shoulder, shaking him away from the restful slumber and slamming him hard into disruption. Danger? He opened his eyes, saw Sadie there looking at him and not quite caught on to why. “Wha-?” Muttered as logic and reason demanded he chase them amidst the clumsy haze of sleep.

Sleep. Rest.

That’d been what she asked of him and he’d done it, but seems the time for it passed quick. He groaned, some regret at having to give up the slumber crying foul. His arm felt twice as heavy as its normal as he dragged it up, stiff and aching, to rub at his eyes and down his face, working some sense of feeling and alertness to it. Chest hurt fierce again and he started to cough, the wet rattle eerie to hear; he tried to get air in, tried to roll to the side in the thought that might help. Sadie moved quick, tried to help him with a grip on his arm and he shook her off, pushed her back. Habits died harder than outlaws, weakness a standard to hide and keep trouble off his back.

“I’m fine,” he struggled to say. “Leave off.”

Sadie relented almost too quick, pulling back with a cold statement. “Whatever you say, Mr. Morgan,” as she stood, hands raised and clear, giving him space. He heard her move between his coughing, caught something about a stagecoach before she were gone and he could focus on the hard task of spitting out a clot of mucus, breathing in the airways freed by it. The ache persisted, but he were able to soothe his breathing to a steadier, shallow pace in a few moments and he lay there, half raised on his elbow, and rubbed his hand at his face again.

“How are you feeling?”

Calm and balanced compared to the spitfire; Charles he remembered from sometime in the night, but muddled still were the connection of how they’d all gotten there after being held far apart by bad luck and worse circumstance. The fog’d begun to peel back, but he was disoriented, with half of him sure he were supposed to be dead, but for the ache in his chest that told him clear that he weren’t.

At least, not yet.

“Like I ought to be dead,” he ground out. Arthur could see him moving about the unfamiliar room, picking up and setting items down that he couldn’t quite make out. “Why ain’t I dead?” Flashes of days or hours gone past sparked some fantasy that maybe he were, but it didn’t hold true with the pressure in him that set him off coughing when he tried to sit up.

Charles came over and, ignoring the wave of his hand meant to dismiss it as nothing, helped wrestle him into a sitting position, legs pulled off the bed to let his feet drop to the floor with a thud. Arthur bent forward near double, shoulders wracked hard and heavy each time he tried to breathe in. Half a minute, maybe more, before it subsided and he could rest his elbows on his knees, staring down at the wood plank flooring. His head felt light, vision threatening to spin and fell him, so he closed his eyes and pinched fingers over the bridge of his nose like that’d stop it.

“I was dying,” he said, reiterating this point that he couldn’t reconcile. Vertigo stabilized, he opened his eyes again, vision watery and tinged red with the hunger for oxygen that all his breathing couldn’t quite serve, but he could see as Charles stepped back, arms held low and only a few degrees from his side, like he was being cautious, faced with some wild animal, unpredictable.

“You still are, Arthur,” he said, sombre and truthful in the same blow. Odd that this confirmation, from one he trusted to be honest to the edge of blunt, didn’t give him the same sort of surprised it would’ve three months ago.

Then it were real, what flashed in his head; the flight and the fight. Micah and Dutch. He felt the red-hot anger come upon him then, that he weren’t done still. That there was more Arthur Morgan had to do to set things right. Always one goddamn more thing and he were helpless for stopping, so he took on that mantle of anger, armoured himself by it. “Then why ain’t you left me?” he demanded. “Ain’t I done what was needed?” Fury tainted heavy with frustration, a heady and unwelcome sensation of distress that he’d never get it right, that this life’d keep playing out like its own living purgatory. “Why’d you-“ More choking coughs interrupted him, kept him from yelling and made it a real effort to get even a word in before he’d have to cough again. Eternity, it felt, before it gave him the space to breathe and speak without tripping up either. “Goddamnit, Charles! Why?” Hard to hide in them words the plaintive shadow of the man he’d burned to the core, what were exhausted and done with existing, but dragged back to endure more.

The door of the room opened as he stumbled between coughing and demanding answers and after that it was that he heard Sadie’s voice loud and clear. “Charles had nothing to do with it,” she’d said, never one to shirk her due blame. Proud of it, half the time, and wore it like some badge to revere. “I did, like I said before. Got Marston safe and went back to the Hollow for you, so damn me if you want. But not him and no one else.” Her hands were on her hips, foot kicking the door shut behind her; ready and wanting to strike, like she’d been waiting for this fight.

That riled him more than it ought and the part of him what knew that he needed to hold off were swallowed quick by the readiness to strike right back at her. This idea that he could blame her, Sadie Adler, for not letting him die when his death was due surged its way forward, convinced that she’d done it half as much to spite him as to save him. “Course you did,” he muttered. Sadie had complexities and strengths, but none of it ever understood what’d come by him before Adler Ranch, nor the most of what he’d gone through to earn that peaceful moment to die in. Arthur felt his throat constricting and he cleared it with a rough cough, repeated a handful more as his chest screamed foul. “You ever think even a second that I wanted to come down off that goddamn mountain?!”

Lashing out, the heat of it suffusing his face as he thought to all he’d done to not get here. Avoiding any way of dealing with it what would’ve burdened others until he were ready to face a hell that offered punishments what held no candle to the way his life’d gone. After all that, he were made to be here and denied that end. Mad that it were Sadie what done it. Mad for no reason but his own damn grief at being alive after thinking he were finally done and could rest.

“No,” she shot back, voice nearer a shout. “You want to die and we all know that!” She looked angry, a hardness to her eyes as she glared at him with her head held high. “That don’t mean you get to, Arthur Morgan. You don’t get to leave me like that, you hear? And you’re a damn fool if you don’t!” Sharp and certain, this weren’t the Sadie he’d sent to see Abigail safe; surface matched, but that hard edge of hers were nearer diamond. What’d gone on while he was dying up there? What’d gone on that he missed in the lead up? What’d it matter, when either answer could weaken his angry resolve.

“Arthur, you’re not clear yet.” Tempered words and tone from Charles were as fresh air between the heated words, cutting through to make a point and force them both back a moment. “This illness is clouding your head.”

“Tuberculosis,” he said, not looking his way. No longer shirking the word the way he’d done at first, when he’d struggled to fit it this into the grand, shit-smeared plan that his life gone and turned into. “And it ain’t muddling me no worse than before,” added, mind that he aint’ pieced it all together yet.

“What do you remember?” Charles asked, pressing the matter to push past what he wanted them to hear and dig down to the truth of it.

Too much with too little sense after a point, but he had clear recollection of one factor that he’d a vehement hatred ready to spit at. “Micah,” he growled, near choked on the name. “The goddamn rat sold us out to save his worthless hide. We was all damn fools for not seeing.” And Dutch, twisted by the vermin until he shed his values and let everything unravel before his eyes; these were things he remembered with a painful clarity.

“What else?”

“Don’t, Charles,” Sadie cut in, venomous. Her arms were crossed now, the fight held back by the calming intervention, though it were clear she wanted to tear a strip clean off him. Readied with arguments, always quick to shove some reason or validation forth to prove her point; he’d never quite won against her, often figured no one could. “We don’t got the time. Stage leaves soon.” She shook her head and grabbed a set of saddlebags, from Bob likely, but it triggered a thought.

“Buell.” A memory of a horse’s scream that split his head; he doubled over, palms of his hands pressed sharp on his temples though that might ease it. “Them fucking Pinkertons shot him.” Bright in his mind were the whites of Buell’s eyes, the foam of sweat, the panicked heaves of his chest before death took him. “John, yelled at me to move, but- can’t leave him like that.”

Rage drained from him as he tried to pull it together, tossed back to the chaos of running alongside his outlaw brother. Bullets ricocheting off the stones of the mountain after Buell died, firing back at the bastards what killed him. Told John to get out, save his family even knowing that meant leaving part of it, his brother, behind. Couldn’t make it out with him, could barely keep his breath as he sent Marston away, so’s he could be his own man outside the shadow of Dutch.

“He’s got ten minutes.” Sadie’s anger, real and sharp, cut him back to the present. She hurt, too; had to, being that angry, and that ought not have made him stop and sense it the way it did. “Damn fool wants to die, then he stays. I ain’t going to waste this if he’s that set on it.” She sounded tired, an echo weak and overpowered fast by the fierce fire in her; with steps heavy and fast to belie that exhaustion as she left, door closed firm and fast in her wake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All of 10k words and more added to the Word document this week, though less to the posted chapters; I'd been hoping to make a third instalment, but time ran short. Each chapter is turning out around ~4,500 words, which I hope y'all enjoy the flow of; let me know! I'm hesitant to make them longer and reluctant to make them shorter. ANYWAYS, a good chunk of the next instalment is typed up already and I got my groove back on writing the... future story while typing up the current one? Man that gets complicated; basically, this all is one section of the story and I'm still up ahead by about 200 written pages moving THAT part of it ahead. 
> 
> Also, big shout-out thanks to fren Mac for all the streaming he does with his radio voice; helps me chill and focus on typing while having a pretty shiny stream to watch and comment on when my brain stops.


	7. Chapter VII: Van Horn Trading Post - 06: Promises, Promises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles works to carve some understanding out of the muddled recollections Arthur has in the wake of Sadie's ultimatum.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

Arthur lowered his hands slowly in the silence left behind, looking to Charles and feeling his surety of his anger slip from him. “I-“ He coughed, chest tight. “It ain’t making sense,” he admitted, finally. Words and meanings weren’t connecting too well, both in the hearing and the speaking; couldn’t parse if he were in the right or the wrong right then. “Thought I were done for and can’t keep up why I’m not.”

Charles kicked over a pair of boots – his boots, muddied and bloodied. “Get dressed, Arthur,” he said, a melancholy shadowing the words, for all the conviction he’d conveyed. “You should go with her. What she’s done to get here is no small feat, but she’ll need you to see the light at the end.” He stood back to give him space to move, maybe think on them words, and picked up his worn leather jacket from where it rested on the back of a chair near the fire.

The boots felt heavier than he was used to and his fingers weak, fumbling with them. Arthur used that task to distract him from the muddled melding pot of his perception, inconsistent and jagged with pieces that didn’t quite fit. All that came about as easy, with his grip slipped; he cursed as a boot fell over, reached to try again.

“Try not to let your pride kill you,” Charles added, and with a slight inclination of his head towards the door, “or her.” He walked back over and lay the jacket on the bed, then knelt to help right the fallen boot and get it on his foot. Made him feel a fool for needing the help, but he let it happen because that were one thing coming clear to him on what he could do. Or not.

Don’t let pride kill him; there lay an irony familiar in how he’d thrown those same words at Mrs. Downes back before he finally got her and her son back on some road to stability after all he’d wrought to destroy them. All them times he scoffed at it being a foolish thing to do, and here he was accused of the same. “That’s why you think did it, Charles?” he asked, hoarse as he worked the words out. “Pride?”

Charles gave him a rueful smile, brief and hard to see. “I think you did what you thought was needed,” he replied easily. “That’s what you’re like.” The second boot went on with less fuss and he stood once it was done, holding out his hand; intent was clear to help him to his feet. “But, I also think you’d damn yourself before admitting that you could be wrong about dying being the only way left.”

Arthur pushed off the offer, determined to stand without it, but the world tilted fast and precariously when he did. He felt a surge of nausea that threatened to drop him and he couldn’t keep level sense of the room what spun fast suddenly. Charles reacted quick; stepped in and shrugged Arthur’s arm over his shoulder, keeping him from pitching forward. “Easy,” were his quiet advice, maneuvering them the few steps from the bed to the chair. “You’ve been down over a day. This is not something you can shake off.”

Arthur let himself fall to the seat, a groan leaving him as the world stabilized, slowed its rampant twisting all about. “A day?” Hard to make that equate, but then he’d been asleep or in nightmare for most of it he figured. Everything he’d grasped threatened to slip away again, threatened to leave only the bits that he’d near died and Sadie’d stopped it, somehow, without no sense on how it came together. Now he were here, she were angry, and Charles settled as the mediator between them. “The hell happened to me?”

“Hell,” his sardonic reply, “is what happened.” Charles went back for the jacket, scooped up his shirt from the floor near the nightstand. No recollection of taking them off; must’ve been Sadie, trying to help him? “Mrs. Adler went right in after you.” A soft chuckle. “Wouldn’t be surprised if she fought off the devil doing it.” There rested some amused admiration in there, a modicum of respect built on what she’d earned by getting the remains of the gang out with him after the bank robbery went to hell in Saint Denis.

Then he’d been right, connecting that she’d been the one to beat him awake and drag him back from death’s embrace, loathe he were to consider if it’d been the right thing to be done. This time, the realization gripped him in a way that weren’t about to let go, giving him that small start to build on. Arthur weren’t sure how he was meant to feel about it; conflicted had to serve him for the now, but surprise he knew wouldn’t be part of it. All of them driven, all of them desperate, but Sadie being the one to take on death and win? It made a cruel sort of sense that she’d spite it, likely spit in its face all the same.

“Then where’s we at now?” He fumbled with the shirt, managed to drag it on over his red woolen long johns. Least he didn’t have to fight with trousers, those left on him, but his gun belt removed at some point. He hated having no recollection of when and how, but it were less the problem than the gap between dying up there and being alive down here.

“Van Horn Trading Post.” Charles had retrieved his holster and belt, revolver gleaming from shine and not murky from the grit he remembered; one more thing disconnected with what he knew, one more thread to weave to make sense of the last day and some. “And you are about to head west, with Mrs. Adler.”

Odd, that it were only one other going that way when so much of his time’d been spent with others, watching their backs and relying on them some to do the same. “What about you?” he asked, working slow and deliberate at the buttons to not foul that up.

“Many matters are unresolved for Rains Fall’s people,” he replied, holding the belt out once he were done. “I will ride back and do what I can.”

Arthur took it, but remained in the chair for the now; his vision had stopped spinning, sure, but no promises that it’d stay that way if he got back to his feet. Didn’t much like acknowledging it, but fighting the truth were a wasteful cause when the proof were so damn clear that he’d no fortitude to balance out the action.

West, at least, were a comforting idea after so long spent running in all them other directions. Arthur let the belt rest on his thighs a moment, slowly shrugging the worn-out leather of his jacket onto his shoulders. “I don’t like this splitting up,” he said, settling the weight familiar on his shoulders. No hat to don, that much he could recall giving to John with his satchel, his orders to get out and make sure his family made it to safety. “Ain’t safe for any of us.”

“Split up is the only way we can avoid both the army and the Pinkertons at this point,” Charles returned calmly. “You’d do better to avoid them both for as long as possible.”

Arthur winced, all too aware of why his situation with the law had got so complicated for even an outlaw. Dutch’s damn meddling with Eagle Flies, then his own desperate attempts to fix things what went all wrong no matter what he done. This, at least, were clear in his mind, though he’d not been of a mind to have to deal with this all in the long run. “Made a real goddamn mess of things,” he grumbled, most at himself for standing by with that faltering thought that Dutch’d get his senses back and stop the backsliding what’d been going on some time.

“We all did.” Mild and absent every judgement he’d already plied upon himself. Trust Charles to bear that truth willingly, without struggle or trial, while he wanted to crate it up and leave it to burn some place other than his mind.

He lifted the gun belt and let it rest over his shoulders for the here and now, to figure on later once he’d gotten standing upright back to being a thing. “And Mrs. Adler?” Couldn’t quite figure that out still, for all he knew her now a critical piece of the puzzle that’d become his life, weak and sick as it were. Arthur’d done all he could to let her cut free, kept her out of the worst of it, even when it’d been her insistence that they break John out of Sisika. Bore Dutch’s ire without flinching for it, because her decision’d been the right one, no matter that Dutch didn’t see it that way - he hadn’t seen much any way but Micah’s by that point. Only she hadn’t cut and run the way that others had, ordered or otherwise; she’d come back for him, readily shouting at him when he woke irate on it.

Charles reached over and grabbed his arm, hoisting it over his shoulder to help him out of the chair once more. “I have found it wiser,” he said, careful and diplomatic, “to not interfere with her once her fire’s up.”

That weren’t no answer to his question and it were only the effort of standing and fighting the pitched view the world took that kept Arthur from calling him out for it. He stumbled some, found that by leaning his weight on Charles he could keep from falling, but it weren’t a comfortable ideal by any stretch of the imagination. He could feel his lungs protest the sudden work, raising that slow, insistent pressure what tried to close off his breathing.

The fact he’d put no words to it did not stop Charles from sensing it, or maybe he’d expected that more were needed to settle him. He sighed, all but resigned to it, and started guiding them both towards the door. Stopped, though, before he could reach to open it, a point left unsaid and needing voice given to it. “Arthur, we have been friends,” he stated. “Good friends.” Truth to it that didn’t merit challenge; it always had been easier to ride with Charles, his moral compass less crooked and apt to keep him level when he’d otherwise shoot first and bury the consequences later. “I trust you for it, and that’s near as not served me plenty.” Charles’s dark eyes were serious, head tilted to look at him. “This time, I’m asking you to trust me and Sadie both.”

Clearing his throat to speak sparked a spattering of coughs, tight and heavy as his chest felt, and held him back from words some few seconds before he caught his breath again. “Trust’s what got us all into this mess,” he said, rough in his voice, in his thoughts as they traipsed back through all them bad decisions, wrong paths taken because he trusted Dutch to get them all through it. Because Dutch demanded they trust him to get all through it.

“You don’t mean that.” No accusation in those quiet words, nor any questions; plain fact that denial could not and would not serve either of them. Charles knew him too well for that.

And, truth told, he were right; Arthur knew his trust of Dutch’d fragmented and shattered in the weeks after Hosea died, taking that last bit of stability away from the gang when it were needed most. Leaving John to rot in Sisika, turning tail when Arthur called for his help amidst sight blurred and hurt by steam; left them both to die, more than once, and that were only when them two were considered. His trust had stopped blinding him weeks before, gave him the idea to do better than where they was headed and save what few of them he could. But still it lay, raw and rotted, the idea that trust was that key ideal to ride by.

“What even’s left to do?” he asked, a resignation to it. Knowing that turning his back on them had no place in the cards, that Arthur would find some way to make it all happen, once he knew clearer what that goal were. “You got your path, but what’s Sadie need to cut loose? What the hell’d I miss?” Bent on John and his family, he’d left out something that stranded her and made her do all this. That needed him to rectify and he’d do it, he’d find a way.

That seemed to dawn an understanding in Charles, rising up and hiding some surge of surprise, maybe, that his words the night before – that Sadie needed to get out – had stayed with him despite the fever’s burning push. It prompted a shake of his head, a rueful sort of laugh. “You missed your part in it,” he said. “Sadie came back for you, Arthur. She’s done all this, even set John on his way, for you.”

Laughable, he wanted to say, but his chest were tight and breath wheezing. “Sure,” made its way out before a gasp, a deeply drawn breath that only just hooked its nails in him. “Don’t lie like that.” He waved aside with his hand, dismissing it; Sadie only needed to get free of them all to have some chance at life again. Coming back for him damned her as much as he’d damned himself and he refused to buy it. “I ain’t that kind of fool.”

The battle lost before it began, dashed against his conviction, Charles shook his head and pulled the door open with his free hand, half-carrying him in a stumble out to the wide balcony. “Promise me something,” he said. “That’s all I’ll ask of you.”

The brightness of dawn beat down on him and he winced, blinked his eyes some fair few times to make out the beaten-down outpost of Van Horn scattered along the shores. Arthur raised his hand to block the glare of light, glancing with a wary eye to Charles. Weren’t much he could fulfil for promises right then; breathe, some, then what? Die quiet seemed an idea, though Sadie were bound to stop that. “What’s that?”

“Go with her and do your best to get past this.” Simple and frank, but clear in what was wanted: Health to be recovered, somehow, while keeping Sadie... safe? Hardly needed it for her ferocity, her competence. Had to keep her something, some way that he didn’t understand then and Charles weren’t telling him clear. “I look forward to you telling me how wrong I am about this later,” added with the slightest current of challenge. “But right now, you’re in a bad way and things aren’t making sense to you. Clear your lungs and your head, then come back and tell me that she didn’t come back because she needed you.”

That seemed a fair chuck to commit on, to beat this sickness that’d been chipping away at him for months, but he weren’t asking him to climb a mountain. Live, which’d feel about as hard, and prove him wrong later. Arthur supposed it made sense, but he were ready and desperate for some sense to be made right then. His vision kept pitching at odd angles, his breath short, and Charles holding him up more than anything else. He couldn’t argue that he was sick and had been real aware of the dying part of it, for all that’d been defied for the now. Seemed that with the gang scattered, things’d go quieter and he knew Dutch’d lie low, Micah’d be hidden in some rat hole in the wall. And with Marston safe, what else did he have left but time, if Sadie kept fighting off the death what he’d done earned. Maybe he could wait some before the last breath, then; maybe he could take this promise and not foul it up. “Okay,” he agreed finally. “I’ll try.”

-

Down the outside stairs, Sadie lit a cigarette under the cover of her palm, shaking out and tossing the match to fizzle in a puddle what lingered from the night’s rains. Her hands were shaking, the anger running high and hot as she waited for them boys to come down – or not, after her ultimadum. Accusations shot at her from Arthur played back like one of them fine picture shows and she drew deep of the smoke, holding it long as she could before the exhale. Like it could carry off the shaking what came from a temper barely held.

He don’t mean it. She told herself that plenty, twitching ash off the tip of the cigarette. His fever’s muddled him and what’s talking ain’t his sense but his sickness.

Should’ve left him be. Also a logic what come from her, weaker though it sounded and less welcome than the first.

Don’t matter. Firm assertion that carried with it the fact he was alive and that she needed him to stay that way. That part being a fact? Yes. Why else’d she ride out there, straight expecting to be shot by Pinkertons along the way, to get what she figured would be a corpse. Sadie couldn’t ignore that it were beyond brash, even for her, but it told her she needed him. Hard to think why, for how long it’d been, but she needed him and he needed to be alive and the rest? Didn’t matter.

Doubt spoke up again, ripe and fierce in the aftermath of that decision, ready to question it. There was no need but that of fear; she went back because she’d been afraid Marston were right and Arthur dead. Rode hard not because he could be alive, but because she were full scared that he was dead and refused to accept that until she saw it. Because she’d found him a man worth something and she’d been near losing her mind at the idea that he’d be dead, that she’d be left twice in a year having to pick up her life and having no one what she knew or could trust to bear it with.

All what ran in her head were the resignation of it; that Arthur’d been ready to die. To leave her and them others behind like they was worth nothing after the end. The thoughts and twists of it in her mind made her stomach churn and she took another deep drag. Calm spread some through her when she focused on that, helped her shut herself up. To not think on it.

What’s done is done, no matter the reason; she had let go. Same as she’d let Jake go? Crying and screaming into the nightmares, trying to end her life so’s she didn’t have to face it alone. Same as she’d let the O’Driscolls go? Hunting each of them down to castrate some and gut others, until she felt nothing but a deeply unstable satisfaction any time their blood covered her hands. What’s done is done, but Sadie weren’t the type to let go and she’d never fool herself otherwise.

Smoke filtered out between her lips, wisping and curling away with the force of her breath, sharp and sudden. Don’t go back there, Sadie Adler; she warned herself plenty of that, knowing how dark it’d been after Jake’s death, how she’d never full escaped the pain, no matter how much she inflicted it on them others. Don’t be challenging them thoughts and questions what could bring her back to the same doubt, the same devastation what spawned the devil within her.

She tossed down the remains of the cigarette and ground it out under her boot, forcing her thoughts back outwards to the town about her. Casing the road for odd things out and suspicious shadows were, if not healthier, then at least a pragmatic fixation with all what hunted them. Early morning workers and late-night drunks were easy to categorize, according them risk and observation to keep alert. Quiet all around, at least, with no eyes taking much interest in her as she assessed and looked on to the next.

Sadie moved along the boarded walk to the end of the building, glanced to see what she assumed to be their stagecoach alongside it, with Bob patiently waiting, lead tied to the braces of the rear lockbox to make sure he didn’t wander. Looked reputable, fresh enough paint and clean canvas coverings giving it the airs of something legitimate, unlike herself in her muddy, dishevelled gear. The name, Cartwright Overland Transport, weren’t one she knew well, but plenty of folk needing travel meant plenty of options for it. She walked up alongside Bob, scratching the side of his neck absently; he nosed at her free hand, looking for some morning treat out of a habit from camp. Some mornings, mostly to piss off Pearson, she’d taken an apple or biscuits from the gang’s provisions to feed Bob as a treat, which gave the horse a bad expectation of it whenever she first came by. Her hand being empty earned a loud snort what made it clear that this were less than ideal.

“Greedy fool,” she chided him, scratching the long plane of his nose to make up for it.

“Ye’d be Mrs. Adler then?” New voice what she didn’t know and Sadie looked to her right, spied a man hopped down from the driver’s bench, walking her way.

“Might be.” Driver, she supposed, by the look of him; heavy jacket damp with the morning fog, wide hat what’d keep the sun off the eyes during the height of day. Weatherworn look, though, weren’t quite the word for him and she’d a question rise in her mind as to how long he’d been doing this run with how soft he looked to her eyes.

“Wonderful.” Didn’t seem bothered by the guarded response, nor the lack of confirmation. He gave a wide, pleasant sort of smile what had most all of his teeth, save one at the bottom centre of it; rich voice, a charmer of sorts, and his accent reminded her of Sean, but of a Scottish lilt that’d’ve made them get along poorly. “All we need’s yer luggage and husband, then we’ll be ready to depart.” He looked expectantly about, seeing neither of them.

“All’s I got are these saddlebags,” she said, nodding to the ones draped over her shoulder, “and I’ll be keeping hold of them. Husband’s caught something ill, so he’s moving a bit slow, but’ll be here soon.”

Furrowing of his brow, with questions clear about the situation, but he only smiled again after it and gave her a little half bow. “Right then,” said quite cheerily. “Name’s McIntosh and we’ll be riding with Mr. Appleby up there.” A gesture towards the front of the stage and an arm extended what held a shotgun that waved in greeting before drawing back. “He’ll run security for us, case we run into opportunistic sorts once we’re underway. Don’t mind his staying up there over introducing himself; bit of a shy fellow, that one, but does his job and well.”

Sadie nodded, patting Bob’s neck a few more times. “You boys think there’ll be issue?” she asked, leaving off on spoiling the old horse, trying to get a read on their driver. Hard to trust others to do their job, in her experience; she preferred to take the reins herself wherever possible but weren’t in the cards for this day.

McIntosh chuckled; his nose scrunched up with a snort towards the end of it. “No,” seemed honest and fair for an answer. “But ye paid, and good, to get ye and yer husband along to Emerald Station, so we’ll make sure it happens. Anything he’ll need to be comfortable for this?”

“No, there ain’t,” sounded tired and irate from behind her and she glanced, seeing Arthur slowly walking their way with his arm heavy over Charles’s shoulders; trying to bear most his own weight, but his feet dragged some and it seemed he failed as oft as not. She looked to the Charles and caught the hint of a nod, a soothing indication that something, at least, had been sorted before they come down.

Arthur weren’t keen on looking straight at her, red-edged eyes checking over McIntosh and the stagecoach instead. All the gruffness and fire he’d stoked up in the room hadn’t full made the trek with him, skin faded pale and tightly stretched in some places, sunk to shadows in others. All that spent over a short argument raised some shadow of worry on how well he’d handle the ride. “Mrs. Adler,” he said after a moment, attempting a more congenial sort of greeting now that they was in the public eye where arguments were best shuttered tight.

“Arthur,” she accorded him in turn, keeping close hold of her temper for the now. “This here’s Mr. McIntosh,” added with a gesture to the Scotsman, who nodded a greeting and got a brief one in return.

“This the coach?” Terse as he stopped, straightened up to take on more of his balance and lean less on his friend. His eyes moved over the stagecoach, that instinctive distrust of outsiders made manifest in how he lingered on the horse team, the wear on the wheels like they might be suspect in the wrong light.

“That it is,” McIntosh interjected, all pleasantries as he slipped to the side to flip open the door; this came with a practised ease that, at least, spoke to his familiarity with the job for all that the sun and wind had not beaten his skin to a weathered tone. “Cartwright Overland, at yer service.”

Arthur let off a disbelieving snort at that, the action catching up and triggering a short bout of coughing that left his expression a sour mess. “What fine and fancy trimmings,” were his mustered-up sarcasm as he took careful, deliberate steps away from Charles and towards the coach. He ended up using that as his means to stay upright, likely not wanting weakness to parade itself about any more than it already were. He did, however, try to be a gentleman of sorts by indicating the interior with a nod of his head, a short: “Sadie,” to suggest she step in first.

“I’ll be by in a minute,” she replied, intent on his getting settled first. Sadie, for her part, had turned back to Charles to finish up their business. “Thank you,” she said, awkward often at the art of being gracious. She reached out and shook his hand, accepted his calm nod, then stepped half a foot closer to ensure the driver didn’t hear much of what she’d next say. “I ain’t expected it, but what you done.” A pause as she fought for the right way to express it. “I appreciate it, is what I’m saying.”

Charles looked over to Arthur and then back to her, a short nod to accept the sentiment. “Keep an eye out for each other,” he said, his one request worth sharing with the both. “Send news to the reservation if you need anything.” This with a firm squeeze of his hand on hers, reminding perhaps of her promise to let him know if Arthur failed to survive. Or maybe of his promise to create that false grave and keep this slim chance at life secret from the world.

“We will,” she promised, to both points and the undercurrents therein. Weren’t a thing she excelled at, word games, but these sorts were straightforward. Meaningful. She could get at the underlying meaning without much effort. “Be safe, Charles.”

“I will,” came easy, genuine. This were a man that could survive, if nothing else, though he’d the ability to thrive if he but employed it. Charles were too giving, though, to benefit from it; all the good she’d seen of him had been made to the credit of others by his own volition. Selfless, she supposed, for all he’d lived that outlaw life.

They stepped apart, Charles raising his hand in farewell to Arthur, who’d stubbornly waited by the stage door as she tied off this end of things. He nodded, their words already said before they’d come down the stairs, and gestured for her to get in. Again. With an annoyed huff, she stepped up – without assistance, for he were no fool to offer it right then – and in, tossing the saddlebags on the bench seat at the front of the stage, leaving the rear for Arthur. Took most of her restraint, more like all of it, to not put her hand on his shoulder and haul him in when he took to joining her inside, falling back to the rear bench in a fit of coughing what bothered her sharp.

Sadie remembered that she’d them bottles from Rains Fall what ought help him and turned to dig one out of the saddlebags, holding it over to him. “Charles said this’d help,” she said. “Something about it helping the lungs.” Sadie worked to keep at bay the thought that the tuberculosis were too strong to be scoured from him, that this were a futile effort; committed to the idea that he had to survive, she’d no want to think to the odds except to do her best to stack them in their favour.

Took him a moment to accept it, looking at the bottle like he were concerned it another dose of laudanum what’d lay him flat when he expected to be awake and alert for the ride. Arthur did take it, a muttered thanks given in tribute to manners, and downed half in one swig. She left him to it, loosening the ties on the roll-down coverings for the windows so that they’d get a modicum of peace. Heard McIntosh clamber up to the driver’s bench and split some words with Mr. Appleby, then the jolt of the carriage moving as the team got underway and Van Horn Trading Post became some foul memory behind them.


	8. Chapter VIII: Emerald Station - 01: What Ain't Known

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The relative safety found in Van Horn is left in the fog, the party of three reduced to two what have to work out their differences some so that they can make this escape work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

Arthur kept hold of the small bottle after the first swig of it, familiar to the taste of the blend from when Rains Fall had picked the herbs and prepared it for him that day on the mountain. No bitterness to it and no dulled senses, which’d been his concern if she’d meant to lace him with laudanum. Fine for the nights when they had locked doors and windows, but too long on the run of late where security weren’t a luxury had. Too many times the escape got blocked. Couldn’t afford to be any less aware than the coughing and the fever already made him.

Leaving the room and taking the stairs down’d drained more of his strength than he’d admit to here, though the piercing gaze of one Sadie Adler made it abundant clear that she knew the toll paid for his appearances. His pride? That’d been the point from Charles, that he’d best not let it rule him, but so much of his life’d been spent being the Arthur Morgan what never stood down from a fight, nor from work what needed done. The line separating that expectation of himself and pride blurred well and easy, made it simple to don the mantle he held familiar. He’d survived, that meant he had to move forward like he had all them times before – but this go around, he couldn’t push back the ache of his chest and, with it, the doubts what rose, twisted and repurposed, to ask why all this. Why him.

True to his word to Charles, he didn’t give it rise to voice just then; first had to get past this coughing and fighting about it’d only drag it out to where he couldn’t manage. Kept himself quiet as the stagecoach made its way out of the half-dead town. He quelled them doubts by not talking on them, though that soured his mood to match how foul his body felt.

“Stage’ll turn west outside of town,” Sadie were saying, prying up a small corner of the canvas flap to keep her eye on the outside. Then, to his eyes it were as though the last day’d not happened and they was on the ride down the mountain, bleary and fragmented, and it gave him sudden recall of the press of her against his back as she urged the horse faster. A moment there, with the gallop well set and the trail flat, when she’d let her head rest between his shoulders and lowered her guard with an angry curse to fate what sound was buried against him while despair tried to claw its way into her. Only she took measure and drew back her strength a moment later, threw those walls back up to ride on with him hardly the wiser. The flicker of it came and went, left him disoriented to find himself sitting in the stagecoach again, her across from him and wary about the world out there.

Arthur rubbed at his eyes, chasing that echo of the past to the memories, where it belonged. The amble of the coach, jarring over ruts now and again, made it hard to get the ache in his chest to ease off and he shifted to lean against the side walling of the carriage. This gave a measure of relief that he took, greedy for it, even though it still triggered the cough now and again. Each time it wracked his lungs, Sadie looked sharp over his way, her fingers reflexively moving like there were something she could do, only there weren’t and she’d then force herself to look outside again, until the next one cropped up in a fatiguing cycle neither of them liked.

“I’m fine,” he said finally the fourth or fifth time it happened, thumping the heel of his hand against his chest like that’d calm it, and it did some to warrant the action.

Sadie’s eyes lit up like a summer’s wildfire and she clenched a hand tight over her knee, kept her eyes looking out to the world; for all he could tell, she had more anger and more intensity for what happened within the stage. “You ain’t,” she said, flat. Matter-of-fact, and proven as he coughed again and wiped at his mouth irritably. “You’re still damn sick and you ain’t clear yet,” sounded more a reminder to herself, to keep from lashing out, than a lecture to him.

“Yeah, been told that a fair few times now,” he muttered, sure at least of that in the muddled recollection of his last few days. Parts bright and vivid, others shadowed and slippery each time he sought some clarity. He frowned, drew in a deeper breath in spite of the effort it took, and reached out with his boot, kicking light at her foot to get her eyes back inside the carriage. “I also said,” he added, arms crossed as he tried to settle closer to comfortable, “that I’d be trying to get past it. There ain’t much good to a man if his word’s bad, so’s I’ll try, all right?”

There were no need for her approval, all said, but this were his way to mend up what he’d done in the room when his temper’s fuse’d burned down. Weren’t a smiling thing, nor a joking one, just him trying to make the point that he’d promised Charles – and had some hazy memory of promising her – that he’d rest up, get past this, even if only to prove them all wrong about the why of needing to. Sadie seemed to hear it, at least, and though the anger didn’t full take the edge off her, she nodded and looked less like a stick of dynamite ready to blow than she’d yet that morning.

-

Van Horn Trading Post and the Roanoke Ridge were turning to memory behind them, morning fog from the river swallowing up all that’d been there and masking their route west on the stagecoach. Further they got from them pathetic excuses for civilization, the less Sadie spent her time watching the small glimpse she’d made herself at the window to spy for trouble. Mostly, she took to listening to the creak of the wood and iron what made the stage, the rhythmic plodding of the horses, and the bored banter she caught bits of between Appleby and McIntosh up on the driver’s bench. Peaceful and calm, two things she’d never quite come to trust as legitimate, but worth trying to take comfort in she supposed.

“What’s the plan here, Mrs. Adler?” Arthur’s question, come from where he’d propped himself at the corner of his bench seat, worked its way through her cautious watch and her eyes focused on him, thoughts picking up their pace to move fast. What he’d drank earlier done something good for him, a bit of colour back on his face, but he were pained still and tired, damn that he wouldn’t rest right then.

“We get out to Emerald Station, like I’d said,” she said, shifting back to make sure he’d the room to stretch out on his bench without kicking her feet, which’d been rested up there a moment. When he didn’t, she narrowed her eyes and grabbed his trouser leg, hauling both his legs up on the long, empty stretch of the seat so’s he could try. “For god’s sake, Arthur, it ain’t going to kill you to get some sleep,” she snapped when he tried to pull a leg free, even if only on reflex. Stubborn to the core, she put her booted feet back up – right across his shins to hold his legs down flat there – and the glare she gave him were a downright challenge that he ought not take her up on.

Arthur looked ready to kick or shoot, depending on which limb reacted first, and he returned her stare a long moment. Measured the risk of it, remembered the promises made, maybe; she’d bet on the latter by the way he closed his eyes, shook his head and forced himself off the actions. “Forgive me,” he said, tone rusted with sarcasm, “for thinking there might be folk what’d try and chase us down to finish it all.”

“You think I’d let them?” Sadie almost laughed at the idea, welcome to the challenge as she were; she could use a handful of fools to teach a lesson to on what not to cross in this world, the main of it being Sadie Adler. “I rode all that way back through woods rotted full of Murfee and Pinkertons to get your corpse and I were ready to kill them all with my bare hands if I had to,” she scoffed. “I don’t aim to let that go to waste. Give me some goddamn credit.” She crossed her arms and looked again outside, though there’d been no change to the noises beyond what warranted the scrutiny.

He didn’t kick off her legs, nor try to shift their burden off him that time; the look she chanced him gave light to an odd sort of expression. Arthur weren’t shocked, not really, but it were a tempered sort of cousin to it. Like he knew what’d been said and done, but still had trouble believing it. He’d have trouble believing anything for a long while, she expected; no one torn from their way of life were much good at trust and belief at the outset. She’d taken weeks to start letting herself to talk with Abigail, months to start trusting them others around her, and even then? Arthur, Abigail, Charles, and John were the ones that she measured it out to in small doses. The others... Her well of belief in mankind were drained pretty dry by the O’Driscolls and she’d been in no rush to find a new source.

The stagecoach rode in silence for a bit, but for the same steady sounds what’d run with it from Van Horn; one of the horses nickered and a couple birds made calls from the brush at the roadside, but otherwise the same. Seemed a lifetime enough before he broke the stare with her, a wet-sounding rumble from his chest being the clearing of his throat around a cough.

“This,” Arthur said slow, gesturing weak between himself and her, “weren’t planned. I-“ The words stalled and she could hear the rattle of air fighting in and out of his chest and he wrestled with what he were trying to say. Seemed a lost battle, by the way he sighed and shook his head. “Been no one much that looked out for me after Hosea-“ Broke off again, this time from a hurt still ripe for them both; conman through and through, but Hosea’d kept his sense of purpose, his strange shade of morality even as Dutch descended into madness before them all. Arthur scratched as his throat, irritated by the effort it took him to get his point out. “I ain’t the sort to accept that maybe it’s needed,” came with a rough shrug and a determined look away from her to the weave of the dark canvas panelling over the windowed door of the stage.

Heavy words that were hard for most any to say, herself being the top of that list. Sadie could understand it some, had been much the same during the dark weeks what followed accepting that her Jake was dead and nothing she could do would change that. Abigail’d pushed through it, like she were trying to here, and supported her better than the rest’d done, even though she’d been equal pushed away as much as had been heard. Them similarities, connections made in her eyes, worked some to calm her then, pulled some of the tension from her neck and shoulders. “It is,” she said, sure of that. “Needed, Arthur.” Sadie lifted her feet off his legs, settled them on the floor of the coach and leaned forward to sift through the saddlebags – painful small amount of luggage they had, but enough that she found the half-finished bottle of gin started some weeks ago and forgotten until last night. Unstoppered, the smell and taste of it were sharp in her senses, but she took a drink and passed the rest, a quarter of the bottle, to him. “You was sick. Real sick, and still are. So’s it’s needed.” Reiterated, but not pleaded; she needed him to accept it, not think to placate her with half-truths.

“I know.” It came gruff, two words hard for him to speak and the effort of it he hid beneath the act of finishing the gin in one long swig followed by a shake of his head, a few more coughs more from the sharpness of the alcohol that time.

Sadie weren’t sure what about that tweaked her, but it came up on her like his angle were one-sided and limited to what he saw and felt. There were two of them here, though, and that meant life were more a coin, with differing faces and feelings, so she bit down the reflex to snap at him and figured, since they was alone here, she might afford him her own truths after shoving his at him spitefully. “What you don’t know,” she started, knowing that for all she trusted him, she’d not trusted anyone with what went on underneath the life’s grief nor the vengeful anger what she carried. Weren’t easy to peel those back, to give him something worth knowing here, but she tried. “What you don’t know is that I’m damn scared.” Sadie’d only come to trust Arthur with even these bits of what went on in her mind, but she’d not yet opened up on this wound. She figured he deserved her trying, though, if they was to rely on each other for safety and security the next while. He’d earned it, by giving her the chance to speak and be heard, a hand up to her feet when most of the gang’d accounted her nothing more than a domestic hang-on from a bad run north. He’d given her the chance to prove herself capable and right, which was what got her to trust him in the first place, to start seeing the good he hid under all them foul moods and illegal acts.

“I’m scared, Arthur, and what goes from here’s like that same nightmare’s back from the spring, clawing at me. I done with it once and I ain’t sure I got the wherewithal to do it again.” She looked at him, the sting of the truth burning at her eyes like it were a shame she had to speak to this, her heart shifting fast and fearful of how this speech’d play out. She hated the vulnerability of it, that she still carried it under all her anger. “I lost everything when them fucking O’Driscolls took my homestead and my husband from me.” Still cut her deep to think of it; the call of them boys crying cold and frozen to get their door open, the sounds of Jake stepped out and ready to let them have the barn a night or two. Them gunshots, dropping him quick and painful, as she fled to the cellar like they’d always spoke to. Cut her deep to recall it and gave her that same fright, hard to swallow down and put back in the dark corners of her mind where she wanted it forgotten.

“When John said you’d sent him running,” she continued, pushing past the hard knot it tied in her throat, the constriction of her chest, “all them fears came back, started up like they’d never gone and I suppose they ain’t ever did. Here I’d come and avenged what they done, made a new life for myself, and I were losing it all over again. I couldn’t do that.” She stopped, looked away to the outside again. “Not twice. And not when I could do something this time.” She swallowed, bit her lip hard to focus herself on that physical pain what ran parallel to the emotional scars. “So, that’s why, if you’re needing to know. Call it weak or some hysterical female’s constitution if you want, but that’s why. You need help, Arthur, and I need to not face the same hells what I faced when we first met.”

The stagecoach lumbered its way for a time longer, silence stretched long and thin after her words trailed off. Sadie filled it with rummaging a pack of biscuits and some canned strawberries out of their small stores, mindful that they both needed to eat. He more than her, half his weight taken by the infection and too much risk that it’d keep taking until he’d nothing left to him. She held out the package of biscuits to him, the gesture meant to be clear that she expected him to eat the whole thing.

Arthur looked most like eating were the last thing on his mind, but he reached out to take it from her, fingers clasped over her hand some moments too long. “There ain’t nothing weak about you,” he said, looking at her for all she tried to look away, uncomfortable still with what she’d shared. “For what she’s seen and done, Sadie Adler’s about the strongest woman I’ve met,” added as he leaned back, taking the biscuits and slowly tearing the corner of the paper wrapping. There sounded some regret in his voice, but she done her best to ignore it.

“Yeah,” she said, bitter and sore at her needing him in any state but dead. All too ready to have these words behind her, she snorted a laugh out. Forced it. “And Pearson’s a real ladies man,” added with a quick run to safer words. A throwback to the first time they’d ever real laughed together about something, all over a pompous letter written by a sad sailor landbound and rum-soaked.

At least he laughed, a slim and faint sound wrapped in breathing that were tight and strained. Crumbs trailed off his fingers as he pulled away the paper and took up a biscuit to stare at its wholly dry and unappetizing appearance. “I got no way to promise what’ll turn out here,” he said, breaking the piece in half with a bite, chewing and forcing it down despite the bland take on it. Seemed it bothered him, that the outcome had to be uncertain, but she supposed he’d experience plenty of serving up what’d been intended and were about as comfortable with the unknown as she felt. “Can’t say you won’t be left alone again,” came with a rough frustration, like he actually meant to do better at this recovering bit and were angry that he’d no tools to guarantee it.

“I don’t need no promises like that,” she said, drawing her knife to saw away the lip of the can and bend it back so she could drink of the sweet water it’d been sealed with. “Just need you to rest, like you promised me and Charles last night. Don’t even expect you remember it, you was so fevered, but you promised it and that’s what I need. Do that and let me take care of some of them things you’ve done before, so you can rest and beat this. That fair?”

It weren’t easy. She could see that writ all over his face from the tension and the hesitation on a response hid under finishing the second half of that biscuit. But, Arthur dipped his head to show agreement once he’d swallowed that bitter pride and dry bite. “Yes, ma’am,” he agreed like she were some fearsome Miss Grimshaw to appease. The words came with the first hint of his smile, the humour she’d seen of him plenty, and that gave her a flood of relief she covered quick by drinking again of the strawberry water.

Sadie’d no way to countenance it, but she’d a conviction now that this time it weren’t some confused fever making him speak. That this time, she’d spoken with the Arthur Morgan she knew, even a moment, and it were the first time in weeks that maybe he ain’t standing there with both feet full in the grave. Or at least an intent to not be.

“Then all we got to do now is catch a train south,” she said, leaving off that emotional mess of a conversation. “Hole up somewhere there’s enough people to make us part of the crowd. Some place where folk come and go often.”

“More people ain’t always good,” he warned, pulling free a second biscuit and tossing it to her to share the dry, tasteless joy of them she supposed. “Means more folk what could recognize us, could bring the law back down on us.”

“We don’t got much choice.” Sadie’s intents were back to pushing ahead, sure of her path being the best from a spread of poor options and ready to do what were needed to make it so. “More people means more chance of a real doctor what might be able to help you.”

That seemed to darken him some, a recollection of sorts come over him. “Real doctors ain’t able to help this,” he said, a surety he’d like as not known some time. “The one I saw in Saint Denis said it’s about rest and that ain’t easy for folk like us.” Bitterness, full and forceful, stained each of them words to hide the shadows of regret, maybe, that he’d not been able to do that.

“That’s where you let me take care of things a bit, Arthur,” she reminded him, pushing the biscuit down into the strawberries where it might soak up some of that sugary water. “Wherever we end up, we hole up for a stretch. We need money? I’ll find work of sorts.” That’d be needed once the store of cash they had went dry, but she weren’t going to wait that long if the opportunity came up. First chance she had to pad their funds, she would. “Bounty posters don’t know me anyway, so I’ll be able to get some legal work too. The rest, I figure, we play as what worked in Van Horn.”

“That being?” Arthur had more sense about him today, but that hadn’t much been the case before. She’d known that well, but hadn’t quite figured on how to explain what hand she’d played them. Here and now, all she could do were put it to words and hope he didn’t get too riled on it on the roles she’d locked in.

“Mr. Adler’s,” she said, pointing the biscuit his way, “come down with something bad. Mrs. Adler,” this with a pause to take a bite of the hard tack barely softened by the woter, “goes about to find him a doctor. We hole up a while like that; we got cash enough for room and board a couple weeks, so’s your lungs can get stronger.” She brushed the crumbled remains of the biscuit off on her leg, dug out a piece of strawberry with her fingers to add some flavour to the salted dryness it’d left in her mouth. And to think that old Bob’d enjoyed these biscuits when she stole some for him. Strange horse.

Truth told, that’s about all she had ready for them. Tired from – hell, from everything of late, Sadie had less a penchant than normal towards planning it further. She wanted to get him the chance to recover, but were ready to murder for the sake of a few nights of straight sleep herself. She shrugged. “That’s it, Arthur. We figure out the rest after we’ve got an idea of how you’re doing.”

There were no expansive delusions in her words, a step down from Dutch’s grandeurs no doubt. That might’ve helped lend sense and credit to it; lacking claims of Tahitian banana farms and army train robberies, it had a comparative sort of logic about it, short-sighted or not. Arthur broke apart a third biscuit in his hands, gave her a grudging sort of nod. Hard to step back after being so entrenched in the life and death of the gang, she supposed, but he were putting effort to match his word at least. There were one point, though, that seemed to catch on him and he looked careful at her face. “You sure about that name?”

Sadie’d expected this and almost had an answer ready what made sense. “We don’t got a lot of options,” she said, honest on it. “Man and a woman travelling together’s got to have something what links them. Anybody looking for you’s going to look for a lone man. Married man with his wife? Ain’t near as much to note, so long’s we keep quiet and not make a fuss about things.” She held out the half-finished can to him, figuring on sharing the one part of the meal what had some taste about it, and gave a weak sort of smile. “You’re the only one I’d trust with his title, Arthur,” she added, the harshness faded from her tone. “And I know him. He’d rather this than have me sticking out like some target when there were a perfectly good cover story like it.”

“Okay.” Arthur left off the pressure on it, trading out the remainder of the biscuits for the can with a nod she’d almost call grateful. He leaned back, seemed like he might try and get comfortable a moment, but kept watching her, like he were thinking on something. “Truth is, seems you put more thought in this than half the hare-brained schemes I’ve rode with you on before,” he admitted with the ghost of a chuckle in his voice. It cut off with a cough, that persistent reminder that they were on the run from something more than the law here, but he supressed it before it wracked him too hard. “But, we stay light and ready to ride out the second anyone looks at us too long in the wrong way.”

“Fair,” Sadie agreed, taking out a biscuit. Thought about complaining to its stale nature, then recalled how it tasted about as bad as one of Pearson’s better stews. That triggered a huff of amusement and the fortitude to tolerate the rest of the package as a chaser. Didn’t mean she’d not regret letting Arthur have the sweet end of the meal while she took this dry one though. But, best to share the burden, even of the bad foods they had.


	9. Chapter VIII: Emerald Station - 02: On Roles Reversed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life as an outlaw's rough, but living the flipside as the robbery victim? That's just a blow to pride that neither Arthur nor Sadie can accept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

The Cartwright Overland Transport stagecoach’d be their last bit of easy travel for a while and, after a bit more talking and the splitting of a bruised and beaten apple between them, Sadie and Arthur each tried to make the best of it. She’d taken a mirrored position to his, stretched out on the bench opposite while she tried to get some sleep, hat tipped low over her eyes as the steady rumbling roll lulled her away. Weren’t so easy for him, though the concoction from Rains Fall’d served to lessen the cough something fierce, fortified him some so that he didn’t feel quite like a boulder were crushing down on his windpipe all the damn time. He drifted in and out, the sleep of a sort that never dipped too deep; it were something he’d long come used to. Had to be good at stealing rest when one was busy stealing from lives aplenty; Arthur’d done well to learn to take quick naps on horseback and pretty much any time he didn’t need to be ready to shoot or steal at a moment’s notice. Weren’t the most restorative way of it, but it’d serve to keep him out of them murky stretches of darkness what obliterated most of what had happened before that morning.

Then, what luck’d given them a quiet stretch during their time in Van Horn, and then on the road westwards, burned out like a candled what lost its wick.

There was a lurch outside the simple, steady sense of the ride that woke him some few hours later with the sense that things weren’t quite right. The sound of hooves what danced and stamped aside as the stage ground to a halt, the horses reacting to some new development outside the hauled back reins from the driver. “Move out the way,” he heard from that Scotsman, McIntosh, in an annoyed sort of voice quite different from the cheerful pleasantries exchanged in Van Horn.

“No.” This voice a new one, filled with a gruff confidence and muffled more than a stagecoach wall’d cause. Sounded like could be some bandana or mask covering the mouth which, in turn, sounded like real trouble brewing.

“Ah, hell,” Arthur muttered, looking out the small, folded back corner of the canvas-covered window at his right. Footsteps and shadows mustered around this side with whispered voices running back and forth on what they was expected to do here; it were the standard sort of flanking he’d used plenty on stagecoach jobs and here they were, using it on him. He figured on two out there, like as not armed and ready to shoot, but didn’t have a count on the rest. Kept himself still, moving only his gaze to the far side of the coach to get a measure there, but the angles were all wrong to get a sense of things more than that they’d stopped because of some trouble.

Then the rim of Sadie’s hat tipped up some and he saw the whites of her eyes flash sharp, showing her full awake and raring to deal with what’d come to disrupt them. Her left hand moved from her lap, three fingers extended to where he could see it and know how many she’d a bead on. He mirrored the gesture, but for two fingers to show the count on his side. Then he moved his head in a short, jerking motion towards the front. How many? She shrugged and moved her hand slow back towards her gunbelt and the revolver holstered there; either she didn’t know or didn’t care and he’d wager on the latter with this woman.

Weren’t more than a minute they spent like that, assessing the danger without playing their cards of being awake and aware that something foul were about to go down. Law or bounty hunters weren’t the option, since they’d’ve likely invoked their authority first chance they got, but plenty of others than the legal sorts had been on their trail before. Could be them they was after, maybe some Murfees on the trail and still hot about being burned out of their retreat, or could be bad luck of being caught in an honest outlaw’s stage robbery.

“He said to move.” This came from the driver’s partner, Mr. Appleby, and no doubt accompanied by the levelling of his shotgun at these interlopers what stood in their way. Impossible to be certain, but years of being the interloping sort gave him a sense for how it’d be playing out. Likely two or three up front to stop the coach, two and three at each of the sides, maybe a couple to the rear if they was going for the lockbox. All of them rough and ready, but it depended how long they’d been at the life to see if they’d break at the sign of resistance from their victims and give up the prize or if they’d push their luck to make a haul of it.

“No, sir,” was the call from that first new voice, the line drawn in the dirt with a challenge and a chuckle that triggered a ripple of laughter from his compatriots. Arthur heard nothing from the behind of them, just the sounds echoed at the side and front, and that narrowed down the field of danger. Seven, maybe eight of them versus the four here – two visible and like as not paid too little to fight much over the prize, with two hidden still and ready, he was sure, to kill what came at them. He was and Sadie, well... weren’t wise to call her as a bluff. That meant their odds were better than most, especially with her counted as one of the four; real spitfire in a gunfight, that one. Arthur, even sick, still shot straighter than most and were fair confident he could down the two on his side before they much knew what was about.

“My pals and I here,” came that challenger’s voice again, “heard you got some fancy flairs and monies tucked away in this here coach and we’ve come to lighten the load.”

“Yeah,” were a voice from Sadie’s side, loud and sharp and irritating. “Heard you was transporting some payroll of sorts for your bosses. Thought we might cut ourselves a piece of it.” More laughter from them scattered about at the humours, weak as they were, being bandied about.

“Fellas,” McIntosh were saying, pleasantries fetched back and brought up to play, like he could soothe this out. “Ye got your information all wrong here. We got nothing but a sick man and his wife, headed to see some doctor about his cough. Ain’t no wares or monies here, sorry to say.”

This triggered waves upon waves of laughter, this time all started about the same time at some shared joke. Arthur cursed the driver for outing their numbers and playing the fool, at that voice forced light and airy as he plied charms over challenges. All it did to serve them were soothe the thought it were he and Sadie they was after, narrowed down instead to damn fool luck to be on some random coach job. They’d no insights on this payload of sorts and, frankly, wouldn’t be able to offer much of a haul if they’d been willing to. Which he sure were not.

Words went forth and back between them that were outside a bit more, the kind of terse banter what preceded a heavier hand being taken to get results. Sadie weren’t waiting for them to act, her gun drawn, legs pulled slow off the bench, knees bent and feet on the plank floor in readiness to move. She looked at him, nodded that he ought to get down and brace for some hell she intended to unleash. He’d seen that look before and it gave him a sense of desperate frustration because it were mostly followed by his being shot at alongside her, whether or not it were deserved. He shook his head, quick and firm, then tried to say something to stall her, maybe that they could let these fools shoot each other first and sort out the rest later. All’s what came out was the coughing, though, and he fought it; tried to push it all back down. Harder he tried, the louder it seemed to get, pressing up against him in its rough escape. He thumped his fist against his chest to stop it, finally getting some quell to it, but too late to silence it.

“Least they ain’t lying about having folk in there,” were the comment from one by Sadie’s side of the stage, amusement writ clear in his tone. There were a sharp rap on the door, expectant that they’d be listening. “Y’all come out now. Drop the act, ‘cause we knows you ain’t sick, just as we knows this ain’t no mercy ride.”

Sadie gritted her teeth, gesturing again that he ought to get down before he made them trouble, like it were his choice to have made that racket, and he shook his head again to say that, no, he weren’t letting her risk only her head here when his could be as much on the line. She steeled herself, forcing some calm out of the clench of her jaw. “I assure you, gentlemen,” she called out, likely aimed for light and worried like some wifely sort might be. “My husband’s real sick, like you just heard. Now if you’ve set on something to make up this waste of time, take my horse. He’s hitched at the back and he’ll get you some monies. Just don’t do nothing to make my husband’s condition worse.”

Arthur rolled his eyes at this facade, only easing down to glance out his side and not duck to cover like she’d wanted. Two sets of boots were visible now, on the approach to his door, and he caught the shadow of a long rifle and some sort of pistol readied. He drew his revolver and shot her a look what said they was about to have company on his end.

“Now, ma’am,” that odd voice kept on, grown louder as he faced full on the carriage, “we may seem like simple types taking on an opportunity of sorts, but we here have it on good authority that there’s money on board and we mean to retrieve it. Ain’t no offence, but we’ve got no care for your horse or, frankly, your ‘sick’ husband. You and your friend in there, same with your friends up front, can save on a world of trouble by handing it over. We’ll leave y’all free to go with your lives if you come up and out, real quiet like. Less trouble you cause, the better.”

Sadie scowled and jerked her head towards that voice; the nerve of that bastard is what her look said. She had a flash of concern, distrust that maybe this was all for them after all and they’d brought this on two otherwise innocent stage worker. Arthur’d no idea how much cash she’d stowed and stymied away in her time with the gang, nor how much that might’ve drawn unwanted attention along the way. Wrapped up in all he’d done, he recalled more sending Tilly on with the riches, but couldn’t be sure no more. “You, sirs, are saying that you won’t let us live if we don’t?” she called out, all sweet peaches and cream – or aiming high at it. Came out a bit tense and sour, but she were trying one last time to sway them before the letting of blood started.

A snort of laughter and another rap at the door. “How about you come out, ma’am, and we can finish this discourse face-to-face to see who all might walk away today,” this as the door shuddered as it were unhitched and pulled open.

That she let him finish the words were patience enough for Sadie, who pulled the trigger as the door swung open and her target came into sight. The speaker what’d harassed her dropped dead with a hole clear through his face and she was picking her next shot before they much realized that the hapless little lady were factually quite a lethal one and armed to match.

“Goddamnit,” Arthur muttered, kicking open his door and sighting, dropping the two on his side with two equally quick shots. One of them fired wild, but it went wide and sent up splinters when it crashed into the stage’s wheels. The other dropped like a rock with about as much life left in him. Never paused to see more than the absence of that life before he looked out, the stage stopped midway through a strand of trees, and scanned the trunks nearest for signs of others stood in ambush. Weren’t no shadows that stepped out right then, so he went to the nearer threats first.

Shouts and shots up front were followed by the loud crack of the shotgun going off, but when Arthur dropped out of the coach and glanced, it were Appleby’s body that dropped to the ground, dead and the gun fired in death’s last reflex. He ignored the body and checked the flank, crouching along the wheel to keep his profile low as he scouted for trouble that weren’t quick to rise at the rear. “You all right?” he called underneath the wagon’s chassis.

“Just. Fine.” Sadie gritted the words out and he could see her boots scuffing up dirt as she strode away towards her next target, crazy as ever in a fight. He muttered a curse and moved ahead instead; there’d been three up in the path of the stage, though the driver – that McIntosh fellow –managed to drop one with his sidearm in the mess what ‘d unfolded after the first shot.

There was the question of what’d gone on and where these ones’d gotten their information what kept him from killing the other two that stood there. He focused and fired quick, shot one in the leg to drop him and the other in the hand to disarm him. The first fell to the ground, hands clutched at the hole rent in his thigh, and the other dropped his rifle with a shout of pain. The effort of it, the four shots total, with the maneuvering and words wore quick on Arthur but, at least, he had the satisfaction of knowing his aim ain’t fallen alongside his health with this damn tuberculosis. He braced his free hand on the side of the coach, feeling the coughing working its way, wet and thick, towards him, and drew deep breaths to ignore it.

It were over up front, but three more shots what came from Sadie’s way pulled his attention back that way. He stumbled his way around the front of the coach, holding to the harnesses on the horses as he kept one gun trained on them two injured parties, moving to check on her.

The last of her three living targets had ducked under the cover offered by a busted old cart at the roadside and Sadie had suppressed him there with a steady rate of fire as she walked straight at him. Calm and focused in her strange way of fighting, the idea that she were wide in the open for a shot never much slowed her. All’s he supposed going on in her head then were how soon she could have this one dead and the rest dealt with so’s they could be on their way.

“I got two up front for a chat,” he called over, pushing down at the urge to cough with a grip held firm on the harnesses of the lead pair. One or two coughs slipped out before he chased it off, cleared his throat and called at her: “Stop playing with your damn food and get over here.”

Her jaw were set and grim with a promise that she’d be done when she were good and ready. To her credit, she tried to make it quick; Sadie stopped a second to get a line on the coward what took the same instance of time to fire in a blind panic around the wooden frame. It were one of them seconds what he hated, the sort what took no time to go from a controlled gunfight to full chaos. Blind fired it were, but the bullet struck true. Sadie let out a scream of pain, stumbled down to a knee. Her hand went to her side, lightning fast and firm, but he saw the dark bloom of blood spreading under it without much care to the pressure she’d put to it.

Arthur heard himself shout her name and shift his aim to the bastard what done it, the world crawled to a real slow pace about them, but she moved equal fast. Weren’t the most graceful act, but she raised her revolver and pulled back the hammer, watched as the idiot stepped out from cover with the thought that he could either finish her or use her as insurance for his own life. Her shot went a few inches wide from the shaking of her hand, but it got him full in the gut and would’ve killed him nice and slow if Arthur hadn’t fired at the same time, getting him full in the brain. He dropped and the world started to resolve about them again, cries of pain from the two ones he’d shot up front breaking the silence of the dead scattered about.

“You okay?” he called over with a warning to himself that his heartbeat ought to slow down right, still wary on leaving them attended only by the driver. Arthur had one bullet left in the cylinder and he made sure they were aware of it by aiming back that way with a sharp look what told them how foolish it’d be to make him use it. Kept hold of the horses as he did it, needing them to stay proper upright, though he’d leave off them if she turned out to need the help.

Curses lit the air, a vivid string of them from Sadie as she checked her side and pressed down hard again, this time with the length of her forearm to stem the crimson what bled from her. “That fucker shot me,” she growled, voice laced with pain and indignation. She holstered her gun, bullets spent and needing the reload, and used the freed hand to push herself carefully to her feet, looking about to make sure there were no one else she needed to deal with, before she limped slow towards him. Looked him over, seemed satisfied at least that he didn’t have new holes shot in him. “You?”

“Fine,” were his dry reply as he took a moment to pry five bullets from his belt, easing forward the hammer so he could release the cylinder and reload it. Them two that were left had their actions inhibited of a sort by McIntosh, who’d stood on the bench and trained his sidearm on them, making clear that his side was with Arthur and her for the moment. Gave him time to check on her as she neared, the shadow of her arm not stemming the darkness of the blood, the size of the wound. It ran along her side, low enough that could cause a real problem. Dangerously close to the gut, but the set of her jaw staid the question of how bad it were. The real pain of it hadn’t hit her yet, energy of the fight high and giving her a buffer before the toll were taken, and he’d wager them safer if he left her with that protection for the now. “You keep pressure on that,” he said. “Me, I’m going to have a talk with our friends here. See what they think they know.”

“No, husband.” The fire burned bright in her eyes, the anger and frustration of some days running blended with the hot rage that wrapped about her, cushioned her from the immediate cost of her actions. “I got this,” she said, almost batted her eyelashes all sweet like a societal lass. Came off sweet as a viper what’d been stepped on and twice as pissed about it, but she’d tried. There were a strong determination in her voice and she held out her free hand for his gun, freshly loaded, to accommodate the fact that hers weren’t.

There were times it were smart to argue and times it weren’t; Arthur saw it were the latter here and stepped back, murmuring a quick: “Ladies first,” as he handed her the gun. Truth being he felt more like sitting down and catching his breath than questioning them boys, so weren’t a big toil to let her at them. Maybe weren’t the kindest thing to do either, with her mood dark as it were, and he gave the pair a warning look like they’d best not make their situation worse.

“Just be quick so’s we can get that looked at,” he said, moving back towards the coach so’s he could check up on McIntosh and see what he could learn there while Sadie went to work.

-

Agony pierced through her side where the bullet had gouged a deep track through her skin, feeling more like she’d been stabbed with a red-hot poker than shot by a simpering coward; Sadie took on that pain and used it to sharpen her resolve, gritting her teeth as she limped up to the two remnants of the eight-man ambush that’d waylaid them. “Which one of you’s going to talk?” she asked, gesturing between them. One groaned with pain and rocked back and forth on the ground, hands clutched to his leg as his blood blended into a muddy mess of the dirt; one glared daggers at her, fingers pressed over the hole in his palm where Arthur’d shot to disarm him.

Latter one were who decided to be talkative in all the wrong ways, spitting at her feet and holding his head high. “There ain’t nothing to talk about,” he said, defiance making it clear that his lips were shut and weren’t no interrogation what’d change that.

Sadie looked at him, flat and disinterested in all the posturing. “Fine.” She raised Arthur’s gun and shot him between the eyes, then turned her expectant gaze on the other. Silence stood a moment and she heard a growled curse from Arthur, no doubt thinking her hasty in pulling the trigger. She’d readily say there’s a difference between that and needing the job done so that she could take a look at what their posthumous bandit buddy had done to her. But that were only if he pushed the point and he didn’t, yet.

“You pick your words real careful, son,” she advised to the one with the bullet in his leg. “I don’t got the time or the patience to beat around the bush here.”

Pale as the kid was – and kid were right, less than sixteen years by her measure and likely on his first soured robbery by the panic in his eyes – Sadie found that she didn’t much care about his health no more, since he and his friends had been the ones what stopped them in the first place. Scared, he held up a hand to stall her, stumbling over his tongue as he rushed to get words out. “Th-th-there’s cash,” he claimed, shakily pointing to the stagecoach. “S-some haul from them Cartwrights, real big one.”

Cartwrights. The name of the company what owned the stagecoach and now earning itself more an etching in her memory for later. Sadie pulled back the hammer with her thumb, looked at the kid over the iron sights of the gun. “Cartwrights?”

“B-big, powerful pair of ‘em from Saint Denis!” He tripped over himself in his rush to come clean while staring down the barrel of a revolver she were all too ready to pull the trigger on. “They’s the ones taking on Bronte’s territory. A-and some of them O’Driscolls what joined ‘em ever since Colm hung.” He were terrified and fast with facts he thought might appease her now, words flowing faster than a spring creek. “Th-they even got s-something in Rhodes after them families there all fell out.” A shaking hand pointed up at McIntosh. “Th-that feller’s one of them, swear on my momma’s grave. H-He’d know!”

Swearing on his mother’s grave; of course. That made him a real lost sort, a boy without none of that maternal guidance what could’ve helped him avoid bleeding out on some deserted sort of road outside the realm of nowhere. Some might’ve given him credit, some sort of leeway for what he’d lost in the past, but Sadie only stepped forward. Raised up her foot and ground down her heel on the bloody mess of his thigh. He screamed, piercing, and she heard Arthur shout her name like it’d stop her. Sadie weren’t interested much in stopping; mention of them pig-fucking O’Driscoll boys triggered the hazy white rage what come over her any time she found one of them, made her less apt to be kind after all what they’d done. “That all?” she asked, voice sharp and promising him much more pain if he’d left any details out.

The kid were crying now, skin fading paler by the second; she knew in some logical corner of her that he’d never make it with the blood he’d lost. So, she waited for him to nod, blubber something about how he’d go clean now and never cross her again, please just let him be now. That was when she shot him dead, figuring it kinder to end his misery than leave him to the slow death alone.

Sadie turned back to Arthur, seeing the struggle in him of anger for what she’d done and concern? Hard to tell right then. Her head felt light, like when she’d gutted that Fat Tommy bastard who’d cut down her Jake. She gestured to McIntosh, who’d stepped down to speak with them both and were now staring at what she’d done, baffled at how some sick man and his wife’d taken a stagecoach robbery and turned it full back on the robbers. “You talk with him,” she said, stepping unsteadily past them both, but not before she gave Arthur back his revolver, two bullets less than when she’d taken it. “I’ll... I’ll go see what them bastards were carrying.” Arm still held firm over her side, pain of it held back by that protective anger she held close, she moved away to start searching the bodies for anything what might prove useful later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Insert maniacal hamster laughter (yes, Rhino from Bolt, tyvm). Three chapters this week! First shift of location, which means technically a new named part to follow the theme of the game's so-titled chapters. This week's update is about five hours later than intended (I aim for 16:30 PDT/PST), but I really wanted to get this part out this week. There's been a lot of emotional back and forth for the characters and it was time for some action to explore other aspects of their personality and give them a twisted sense of normalcy back. Tweaked the tags to reflect the increased violence and references to gunfights, blood, and injuries. Um. That about it. I go zzzzz soon. Happy early Thanksgiving to the Canadians out there! (of which I am one, long weekend coming up)


	10. Chapter VIII: Emerald Station - 03: Question Me, Question You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ambush settled and survivors few leaves Arthur to question their wayward driver as to what is so darn enticing about their stagecoach. New plans are needed and they rely on a business acquaintance to get settled for the here and now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

The soul of her were hid away, the wildcat left in charge and that were dangerous to all, though mostly those what crossed her. Arthur’d seen this dispassionate predator before, when she’d dealt with Colm and his boys time and again. Curse he could (and did) at her torturing the kid and then killing him, but blame? That he didn’t have measure of for her, not right then. She’d lived through more hells because of them O’Driscolls and what she’d seen changed folk, better or worse. With Sadie, turned out worse more than better, but weren’t her fault what they’d done to her. Weren’t his place to judge what she done to survive it, but a word about it’d what they’d have once McIntosh here were dealt with.

Arthur frowned, holstered his gun, and worked at heaving them slow, steadying breaths that wanted to spasm, constrict, and be nothing but trouble right then. McIntosh stood there, stunned and slack jawed at what’d all happened, shocked maybe that his buddy Appleby were dead, along with plenty others.

“You,” Arthur said, pointing at him, gesturing him to step closer. “Best you and I talk,” were his suggestion, like there were worse options he could take. “Mrs. Adler, she don’t have the best of tempers.” Sadie ignored them, digging through the pockets of the dead to see what she could learn and take, since they needed none of it no more. One hand stayed firm on her side as she went, blood oozing slow through her fingers, but all she did were mutter a curse at it like it were an inconvenience, her mind refusing to acknowledge that she’d been shot until she were damn ready to.

McIntosh jumped, startled and skittish, a sweat beading up on his brow. “R-Right,” he said. Looked real uncomfortable about it all and Arthur made it worse, played on it, when he put an arm around his shoulders and led him some steps to the side. Some steps what gave him clearer view of how many lives’d been lost over, what? Well, that’d be up to him now, wouldn’t it?

“Now, seems we got a mystery here,” Arthur ruminated, patting his hand amicably on the man’s shoulder. He spoke slow and deliberate, swallowing back the protests of his lungs to maintain some air of friendly menace over sick fool. “Me? I ain’t much into all them secrets and lies. My wife’s less so.” This with a sad shake of his head, how real unfortunate that fact were and suggesting maybe it made things worse when she got involved. “How’s about you clear it up with me and I’ll see that she don’t get to have a word with you alone.” This as he slowly strode them closer to the dead kid and his defiant (and equally dead) buddies; a reminder, maybe, of what that’d mean. “Fair?”

What’d happened unsettled the man, but he thought long on it. Weighed his options with too much care. It gave Arthur half the idea that this trembling fear were some part ploy too, that this fellow had more experience with robbing or being robbed than he wanted to let on. Death’s dance before his eyes, though, served to loosen him up some, admit that maybe something weren’t full on the level here. “This weren’t what’d been planned,” he said, nervous tick thickening his accent.

Arthur drew in a slow breath, almost like he were regretful. Almost. His chest hurt, lungs protesting pulling that much air in, but he forced it back. Needed a few minutes here not looking like he were ready to fall over. “Never is,” he agreed, friendly again. “Why don’t you say what was planned?” His arm tightened up around the man’s shoulders, reminder that this seemed all congenial, but there were a real risk it’d go downhill if he stepped wrong.

Tension coiled tight through McIntosh’s shoulders, eyes jerking from corpse to corpse, then over to Sadie as she worked calm through Appleby’s pockets before kicking him aside with the rest. He licked his lips, mind likely run rapid with ideas, options on what to do. Most would try to run, some might fight; weren’t sure what this one’d do, so Arthur kept his grip on him, put some weight behind it. Felt easier that way, half his strength gone again after the travel and their brief skirmish, and served to keep their buddy right with them without having to put full weight on his own legs.

“Come on,” he coaxed, keeping that mildly friendly cant to his speaking. “Couple words here ain’t going to land you in the same sorts of trouble that holding your tongue might.” He lowered his voice, like he were sharing some poignant secret between just them. “My wife over there? She’d prefer you didn’t talk, mind you. Gives her a bit of cheer to help liberate information from them what ain’t willing.”

“You done, Arthur?”

Sadie couldn’t’ve timed it better had they planned it out ahead. The impatience of her words matched that of her call as she kicked over the last corpse, her gaze moving over to them and their last living connection to the truth of the situation. Lost all his colour, McIntosh did, and he half choked at some sudden, pressing need to stutter some words to save him from her mercy. “Ye was unlucky,” he said, head ducked as he spoke quick, like they might forgive him. “We had some monies and all to move, figured that taking on some nobody passengers’d make it look legal. No one the wiser.”

Arthur knew that tactic; seen them cards played plenty, though he’d rare gone in for dealing them. Weren’t the most honourable route, putting innocent folk in a potential risk, and that went against some ideals he ruled himself by. “Seems to me that plenty were wiser to what you done,” he commented with a nod to the fallen. “You got yourself a real problem then, boy.” He scratched absently at the back of his neck, like he were thinking on how to deal with this. “How’s about this: You tell me where these monies been hid, and I’ll find some way to forget all this happened.”

McIntosh hesitated, coming full aware of how thin the ice’d become beneath him the longer he held out. “Ye understand, Mr. Adler,” he said, trying a last wheedling to get himself free. “I tell ye anything, they’ll see me broke, then dead. In that order and it ain’t pretty.”

“They’s being them illustrious Cartwrights we just heard of?” Arthur arched a brow, feeling his patience wearing lower the longer this took. “Might be better if you found yourself some different employment then.” Intonation clear here that he’d talk, and well, before they was done; reminder that Sadie were here to encourage him too.

There were no ways out of the corner he’d been pushed in and he dawned on it, went pale by it. “The rear bench,” McIntosh said, shoulders slumping down as defeat surfaced. “Ye got to press the release ‘round the middle and it’ll lift forward; ye’ll find a latch. We got the goods in there, locked tight. But I doubt ye’ll be much stymied by a lock, after what all you just done.”

Arthur smiled - a condescending sort of smile what said this boy done good and saved himself a beating today – and raised a hand, patted McIntosh on the chest with an encouraging sort of reassure. “Sadie, you hear that?” he called out, not looking away. “Turns out Mr. McIntosh here’s got some recompense on offer for today’s...” He trailed off and looked about them bloody bodies cast about. “Inconvenience,” suited it well. “Check where I was sitting. Seems you can lift it forward, find us some treats there.”

McIntosh swallowed thick, fidgeted under the hand laid on his chest and the arm around his shoulder until Arthur increased the pressure. Gentle reminder who held the ace in this deal. “Ye got to leave me something to show for it,” he pleaded, shifted quick to the beggar like it might trigger sympathy. “I go back with nothing, and I’m good as dead. Ye might as well have her shoot me now.”

“Naaaah,” he drawled out with a shake of his head, lifting his hand off the man’s chest to pat him twice on the cheek. “You all should’ve thought about that before you went and took advantage of me and my wife,” a chiding, regretful sort of statement that were insincere is it could get, seeing as the advantage turned out their own.

There was the sound of Sadie hauling open the stagecoach door, a pained grunt as she pulled herself up and started poking around the bench seats with her free, mostly unbloodied hand. There came the snap of a metal spring, a surprised huff from her, then she hauled it up and forward. “Found it,” came not long after, a small locked box tossed out to the ground. She rummaged some, hauled out a small crate that’d been in there too, all stacked with bottles, each of them wrapped in gauze so’s the glass’d not break. “Moonshine,” she muttered. “Gold would’ve been better.” This with a sharp look at McIntosh, like he could wave his hand and convert shine to silver or some such alchemy.

“There’s whiskey too,” he plied, a weaker claim under her withering look. “Couple real fine bottles, worth some pretty pennies.”

Arthur chuckled, “That weren’t so hard now,” he commended with a slick smile of sorts, pushed the man back to stumble a few steps while he picked up the lockbox.

Sadie laughed to his comment, her tone more a bitter and flat sort. “Sure it was,” she bet, setting the crate on the carriage floor. She pushed the bench seat back down until the latch clicked again, then hopped out, leaned back on the step up with a grimace. She drew her gun and it took some effort, but she released the catch of the cylinder, managed to load a couple bullets in so’s she could train the muzzle on McIntosh with lethal promise. “I got this one. What’s in the box?”

With her injury, shooting the man’d be a one-handed job, while the lockbox required two and so he worked at it. Knife to one hand, lockbox to the other; it were a practiced sort of move, easy and familiar to snap the latch and flip it open. Three stacks of bills’d been wedged inside, neatly counted and wrapped before they was put inside. Arthur sheathed his knife and drew them out, counted quick of the bills to find near a thousand per stack. “That ought to do,” he said appreciatively. Two of them stacks went to his pocket to split with Sadie later, the third tossed to McIntosh, who just bare caught it with a fumbling hand before it hit the ground. “You’re a lucky son of a bitch, Mr. McIntosh,” he informed him, all jovial. “Me? I’m feeling generous, since you went and played nice when asked. So, you take that and run along. Tell your boss that these boys here robbed you, leave out the bit about me and my wife. You do that, and we’ll both forget your face. Deal?”

The look shot his way from Sadie said she’d like as not go for killing him and leaving all this in the dust. Arthur figured it a fair trade, though, because he didn’t much like her shooting first, second, and last in all these sorts of situations. He met her look, didn’t waver; challenged her on it until she frowned, played along. “You mention us,” Sadie added, deadly sort of clarification to her tone, “or we that anyone saw us here today?” She holstered her gun, pushed herself straight up with a grunt of pain, and took a limping step his way. “I’ll remember you quick and finish this between just the two of us.”

McIntosh looked between them both, caught between their wills on this and unsure whether he ought to take the bait what might see him free of it. The bloody murder of Sadie’s expression seemed to motivate him, a real inspirational sort of revelation, and he nodded. Fumbled the cash hastily into his pocket and then made as though to climb back up on the stagecoach and be on his now very un-merry way. Here, though, Arthur put a hand on his shoulder, shaking his head.

“I ain’t ever said you get more than the money,” he chided, all familiar and firm. Arthur had some fine ideas on what to do with it, part of that being a more comfortable ride for two of them headed westwards over sharing a horse with Sadie injured and him, well. Damn tuberculosis. “Me and the lady here paid for this stage to get us to Emerald Station and we’s going to get our money’s worth.”

This eased Sadie some, gave her a smile sweet as a viper’s venom as she started to move around the other side of the coach. “You wouldn’t dare leave a woman and her sick husband stranded all alone out here?” she asked, clear in her sarcasm that she weren’t no frail flower what’d falter in the wilds. She kept walking, disappeared round the back a moment.

“Yer leaving me?” McIntosh asked, all that pleading gone to indignation. Seems soon as one guise failed, he picked up another; real conman in the making, this one, but without the same experiences, smoothness what’d made Hosea one of the best. Too quick to change and play some new card, at least against those what knew the con’s art like he done.

“Smart kid, this one,” Arthur added, kept him distracted between the two of them. He waved at him to get away like one would a stubborn mule and, to rub salt in the would of his pride, added: “Now, git.”

Sadie’d limped back into sight with her rifle slung over her shoulder now, and near threw the reins from Bob’s bridle at McIntosh and jerked her head back they way they’d come. “Take the damn horse,” she said. They had to sell or set him wild before they boarded the train anyhow, so weren’t a big loss right then. Ain’t ever really been her horse, but an extra mount stolen off some job or other, no attachment that’d make either of them regret it. He saw that she’d pulled off her canvas bedroll from the saddle, bit of foresight what’d make sleeping easier on her later, if they’d no room to let out Emerald way, and one less thing to make McIntosh’s return to society a comfortable one.

Seemed all the man could do were mount up, like he realised how numbered his minutes were in this life the longer he stayed there. Never bothered to tip his hat to the lady, nor much else in the ways of formalities or manners. Just wheeled Bob about, kicked him fast into a gallop, and like as not considered himself lucky to be the only one riding away from these crazed folk.

It were once he’d gone from hearing and mostly out of sight that Arthur dropped the congenial act, leaned forward with his hands braced on his knees to let out all them coughs and hacks what’d tried to disrupt him since this new hell started up. Wheezing hard, he struggled with the breathing until the motes of nothing about the edges of his vision sharpened back to things about him. He spit out a bit of phlegm, bright red flecks in it shouting the irritation struck up in his lungs, then wiped his mouth and looked over at Sadie, anger surging up about what she’d done.

“You mind telling me exactly what the hell you was doing?” he demanded, straightening slow and gesturing to the bodies up front. “He were all but a kid and you killed him!” Arthur put his hand against the coach, braced himself there a moment before he started working his way up to the front so’s he could get up on that damn driver’s bench and get them moving.

Sadie held off responding right then, busy ripping a stretch of cloth off the first one she’d killed. This she rolled some, placed up against her side. Blood had slowed some and it’d do a better job stemming the rest, but the wince as she applied it told too much about how the hurt of it’d started to permeate her senses. “He was all but dead, Arthur,” she said, the tired shadows suddenly rife in her voice. “You’s the one what shot him anyway, so it ain’t only on me.”

“We could’ve got him help, rode him to Emerald and seen him patched up,” he growled. “This kind of killing ain’t quiet and it ain’t right.” There was rules, of a sort, and being in an irate mood weren’t one of them that allowed for callous murder. He drew in a deep breath, hauled himself up with efforts he were running low on, and settled on the driver’s bench, sorting out the reins from the mess when Appleby’d been shot. Must’ve tangled some on his way down, took a bit to get them all straightened again. He sighed. “How’s we supposed to disappear if you go leaving a trail of corpses?”

“I don’t rightly care,” she replied, moving slower as she stepped up and pushed at him to make space on the bench. “Next time some fucker shoots me, I’ll try not to kill him and all his friends, but I ain’t taking back today.” Eased into a sitting position that let her lean an elbow back on the framing of the stage, leaning her side that way to make it less effort to hold the makeshift bandage there, Sadie unslung her rifle with her free hand, rested it over her lap.

“Goddamnit, Sadie,” he muttered. Equal parts of his anger were to the fact she’d indeed been shot and spilled a fair bit of blood for all she’d spilled of them others’ and he’d no sense how bad it was. Looking at it here, with no water to clean it out, could infect it, make it worse. They’d have to wait, but time were key with body shots, risk high that the gut’d been hit and the poison already seeping. The anger hid that worry, them experiences what’d seen others die because they never got it looked at in time, and he let it. “The hell am I going to do with you?”

“Always heard it a sweet thing to buy a girl dinner and tell her how pretty she is,” came her sarcastic response. Always sharp with her wit and quick to move off arguments, dismissed or hard-fought, and the suddenness of it put him off balance, made him snort a bit of amusement. Arthur shook his head and swallowed back the fight, urged the horses forward and around the mess what’d been left on the road. Goddamn fools, all of them; and he were getting the sense that he and Sadie were the worst of the lot.

-

They took that stagecoach the rest the way through, Arthur at the reins and Sadie full trying to ignore the pain so’s she could to stay alert and ready to fire at anyone who tried to slow them this time. Longer that she ignored it, the sharper it screamed at her and turned from simple pain to a burning roar what’d never shut up over the next few hours. The fact she’d taken a bullet at all made her irate and poor company for the ride, but worked out well enough for Arthur’s cough’d come up again and his strength’d been spent, shoulders low and sweat shining on his face from all them efforts.

“What a fine pair we make,” she remarked some ways along. “Sick and shot; I ain’t taking bets on what shit’ll happen next.” Earned a chuckle off him, but it grew quick into a coughing fit so fierce he doubled over and she took on the reins as he fought off the shaking, fought to bring in the air. Clear reminder that they’d chased off them immediate threats of death with bullets earlier, but were still chased by the spectre of it in his lungs. She kept herself quiet after that, watching the road as it passed along, no one else mustering much notice of them. She found half a bottle of bourbon jammed in the footboards and took a deep drink of it, the alcohol something of the balm on her pain, then gave him the rest to soothe his throat.

“There’s a place up past the station,” Arthur said as the sun started to drop off behind the horizon, about as done with the day as she felt. “Got a reliable contact there what’ll buy the coach and team, no questions asked; we give him half what he pays us, I figure he’ll let us hole up the night in the barn. Come dawn, we pick a train and leave; no one’s the wiser.”

There lay tired, uncertain promise in his voice that she felt too, being that they’d both been fed promises and vows plenty of late. How they’d be safe and wealthy, but none of that done manifested. Made it harder and harder to buy into the idea like a promise might be viable. “Okay,” she said, getting on too hurt to care. The stretch of torn flesh in her side was what kept her awake, but she figured another hour or two without care for it and she’d no longer give a damn about the pain. Or much of anything else.

Luck decided to hold after all what it’d not held some few hours earlier; it saw them draw up to a large barn out at Emerald Ranch, doors being hauled open by a man that moved more like a serpent than human, but she figured that as much her being tired in perceiving the world about her than actual snake in human’s skin. “You trust him?” she asked, quiet and for Arthur only, as he guided the team inside.

“Man’s here for profit, not trouble,” was his take on it. “Discreet sort. It’ll hold a night.” Arthur lay down the reins and drew a slow breath, fortified himself to take the few steps down to the ground. This fellow he’d brought them to closed up the doors, but when he walked over, it weren’t a real pleasant expression he had about him.

“What’re you doing, bringing some woman with you?” he asked. Maybe hissed; she weren’t so certain on that snake similarity not being a thing now. “You know I try to keep this quiet.”

Arthur raised his hands up, placating – interrupted by a few coughs what ruined the gesture, but the meaning conveyed itself. “I ain’t trying to make it loud neither,” he said. “She’s good.”

“She could be the Virgin Mary and wouldn’t do me any good,” came the retort. He were nervous, looked over his shoulder to the door. “My boss don’t like strangers what come around.” A terse sigh. “Look. I took a risk when Hosea vouched for you, but I can’t be raising my profile here.”

“You ain’t.” Arthur stepped away from the stage and beckoned the fellow follow him, aiming to separate the fuss from the source of it. “She’s with me. I vouch for her and-“ paused a moment, thought on it, “hell, Hosea’d’ve vouched for her too.”

“Hosea ain’t here,” he pointed out, rubbing at his large nose. The man sniffed like he were trying to scent a trap, then crossed his arms with a long, reluctant sort of pause, a shake of his head. “Fine. But I’m dealing with you only. I don’t need no more business right now.”

“Fair enough,” Arthur agreed, holding out his hand. The shook on it, talked some more about the stage and its condition. Something about them bullet holes and blood meaning he’d not pay full for damaged goods, never had and never would.

Sadie heard it, but didn’t bother to make out the sense of it; weren’t so strange to her now that she trusted Arthur with this, not like when she’d first realized she’d put more faith in his words than any of them others. He’d handle this and meantime? She took up her rifle and slung it over her shoulder with the one hand, then slowly made her way down off the other side of the stage. She stumbled that last step and fell half against the wheel, sucked in a breath sharp at her side screaming bloody murder at the jarred motion. She cursed it and pushed away to limp around it, to rejoin Arthur as he finished up the negotiating and pushed half the fee back to his buddy.

“Need a favour, Seamus,” he said along with the motion.

“I already done you one,” Seamus replied with a wary, pointed look her way.

“That’s why I’m paying for this one,” Arthur grumbled. “You keep that, let us hole up the night here in the barn. We’ll be gone at first light, like we was never here.”

Seamus drew in a long, hesitant breath on that one, looked out over his shoulder again for all them doors were shut, like someone might be watching. “My boss ain’t keen on squatters,” he muttered. “You get seen around here, you get shot.” Like the warning would drive them off, but him not trusting it to work.

Sadie, run down as much as Arthur likely felt, gave off a bitter, sharp laugh. “Too late,” she said. Took a moment to peel back some of the compress, get a look at the wound; dark blood oozed slow, a few streaks of fresher red run along it and she laid it back in place. Hurt something fierce, but no parts what belonged inside her were on the outside, so she measured it something of a blessing. Ain’t been a lethal blow, but a good piece of her carved out like some cannibal’s dinner and no dessert offered up.

The boys talked some more and it went past her without notice until she heard the firm: “Deal,” from Arthur that said they had some sort of accord. Seamus skulked his way off, left by a small side access of the barn, while Arthur came over to check on her. “You all right?” he asked, glancing down to where she’d reapplied the pressure to stem what small bleeding her movement, her peeling it all back, had triggered. Funny, still, that he checked her first, though he looked equal ready to drop.

“No worse than you,” she shot back with a grimace what he mirrored quick. Neither of them had much left for the day, her head feeling light from the drinking and the blood loss, his face pale and sweaty – fever must’ve come up again. Sadie stepped away, unsteady but on her feet, and started checking the walls and doors, feeling like they ought make sure it were secure before either of them let their guard down too much. She’d no idea who this Seamus fellow was, but she did know the stories about Emerald Ranch being weird – that being the best description of it. She’d no interest in being haunted or crept up on after the hellish day what’d been their trek west.


	11. Chapter VIII: Emerald Station - 04: The Doctor Ain't In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Safety secured for one more night means it's time to sort out how bad Sadie'd been shot and patch up what they can. Arthur ain't no doctor, but it's as close as they got. Mind that Sadie makes equal bad choices about self care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

The barn had none of them fancy amenities to make it attractive like them big city hotels, but there lay some square bales of hay that Arthur managed to wrestle together to make something of a seat for each of them. Seamus were off getting fresh water, and a pot of it boiled, as part of the deal cut so’s he could get Sadie’s side cleaned and patched up for the night. She’d been vague when he asked about it and that left him the worry that she’d lost more than blood out there. That concern, rooted with some stubborn resilience in his head, pushed off the exhaustion, dredged up a sense of purpose he’d relied on before and would again. Chest hurt, lungs protesting the very idea of breathing, and he felt that fog coming on him what said the fever’d come back with friends, but he’d the ability to push past that for them others around him. Part of what made him invaluable, he supposed, to Dutch and Hosea; that he’d never quit until others were secured and safe.

Sadie kept moving about, busied by checking doors and setting tools to lean against them so’s that they’d fall if anyone tried entering. The noise of it’d alert them, keep them from being crept up on during the night. She moved with purpose, but the tightly coiled spring she’d been earlier were now come loose, footsteps slow and the left one dragging some in the dirt. He held off stopping her; it’d give some security to them both what might let them sleep in spite of that paranoid shadow what fell anytime luck turned to rot.

Over meddling in that, Arthur took to unloading the little they got between them, saddlebags propped against one of the bales and the crate of bootleg liquor set near. Each bottle’d been wrapped in thin cloth to disguise the clinking against one another during travel and he sat down heavy on a bale, started pulling that off. They was short on medical supplies, having only what laudanum left in that small bottle she’d acquired, and these could serve to clean and bandage up her side in the pinch they was in. Folded and set one top the bottles, it weren’t a large stash, but it’d help hold her together for the here and now.

Arthur made himself stop then and rest a minute; put his mind to what’d happened and what they emerged from it with. “That recompense we took,” he started, leaning forward with elbows rested on his knees, “turned out two thousand and that ain’t with the whiskey sold.”

Her grim laugh cut the air as Sadie looked to that crate of liquor. “I aim to drink that whiskey if it’s so damn good,” she said. That’d take the edge off her pain, and off everything around her; suppose after her few days dealing with him, even before getting shot, she’d more than earned the right to get right marinated with it.

He scratched idle at his jaw, at the scruff of hair grown there; ain’t been huge on his personal grooming these past weeks. Always seemed something more pressing than shaving or cleaning, routine what continued this evening; being on the run and without their kits left more important things than that, he wagered. Any time that went slow before this, he’d been half-dead from consumption and no will to muster the energy to care, much less do nothing about it.

“I figure, we split it same as we always done,” he figured. “Half goes to-“ ‘The gang’ were what he meant to say, seeing that it’d gone that way two some decades of his life. He coughed, cleared his throat to push past that hollow sensation what came of knowing too sudden and too well the gang were done. He were on his own, but for Mrs. Adler here. Turned out a bitter pill to swallow, but he did his best to do it, to hold it down. “Half to cover off living and eating, them sorts of things. Rest gets split down the middle. Anything we got left in the pot gets split between us when we go our separate ways.” Seemed the logical sort of approach to him, assuming this a temporary arrangement were only meant to get them full and clear of this mess made by Dutch’s losing his grip on sanity, leaving them all; the fact still cut deep when he started thinking too hard on it, so’s he avoided it mostly.

Sadie limped her way over, slow and deliberate as she settled herself on the bale opposite him. She shot him a look that warred between fatigue, frustration, and that sharp anger she wielded with lethal ease. “Shut your damn mouth about splitting off,” she said, wearily pulling off her hat to set beside her. “You ain’t rid of me yet and you won’t be until you’re on the mend, dead, or I’m dead first. That happens and you can bet I will haunt you until the end of your damn days.” No room in her words for negotiation and he knew there’d be no regrets for the harshness either.

Arthur looked at her, taking measure of them words, the tone, and her posture (tired, but ready to fight); then he took measure of himself (tired, but done fighting over them points what could pass unchallenged). Months of chasing Dutch’s increasingly panicked dreams while running from his own death served to run his well of stubborn low. It were starting to pull up dry, needed time to fill from the ground up. So’s he chose not to fight it then, and maybe some bit of him felt less that pang of loneliness, knowing she ain’t giving up on him when all else had.

Weren’t no time in his life since being rustled up by Dutch and Hosea when he thought he’d part from them in any way but death, expected mostly from a bullet some ways along the road. Faced with this unexpected reality where Dutch’d left him time and again and Hosea were dead and buried? Arthur had no real sense of what to do, what even he were as a person without them. Years he’d been the muscle what kept the gang and their enemies mostly in line, relied upon and content with that burden. Now, what’d he have left but a sick man with no home and no skills to live but by stealing from others.

Prospects were bleak from his eyes and he sighed, leaned down to pull out some salted beef from what’d be a dwindling supply come another day or two; tossed the slab at her, watched it land on her lap with a missed swing of her hand, a muttered curse. Two peas in a pod, they were right then; he smiled grimly and pulled out a can of corned beef for himself, feeling clumsy enough as he tore off the tab and nearly left the tin lid in place. He ate for a spell, listened as Sadie tore the paper wrapped about the beef and pulled bits off the chew in silence.

“There’s one thing what gets me, Sadie,” he started up, unable to shove off some of them doubts what were questioning what they was up to here. “I ain’t asking about the why’s of it, but-“ He gestured to her, then himself in a vague sort of way. “How’s it you think this whole thing’s going to work out?”

Never tripped up once in her reply, even and clear in her delivery: “You healed or dead.” Sadie stopped pulling at the meat, it something of an annoyance to be done one-handed the way she were working, still holding her side close. “Don’t matter after that,” added with a shrug. “Disappear. Hole up. Whatever.” She pointed at him sudden, snapped his attention to her hand with that angry finger levelled his way. “But you are not getting rid of me, Arthur Morgan,” she swore. “Dutch dragged me out from my ranch, but you was the one that gave me them first real chances at getting back to living.” She stopped, leaned forward over the food and stared down at it like she’d just come to realizing something. “I aim,” she added, quieter this time, “to give you them same sort of chances.” The sharpness were gone, same as the anger and the sarcasms what usually shrouded their conversations. Genuine, he supposed, though it gave him an uncomfortable sense in not knowing how to respond to something sincere like that, to acknowledge that he done anything when it were his thought that she’d been the one what reclaimed living herself and his actions only peripheral to it.

Words left him hanging some there and Arthur stared at her, then down to the brine and bits of the beef left in the can. All too often, he’d remember that screaming, near hysterical woman found after they put some well-deserving O’Driscolls down, but quick again he’d recall her spiteful remarks about outlaws, her anger at hiding with a bunch of folk she measured as no better than what killed her husband. She’d hated the lot of them and made no show of hiding it. Arthur’d seen that fire in her meant to push them all away for fear of burning, but still did his best to fold her into the gang’s protection, kept his eye on her them times Abigail couldn’t. Them chances she spoke of? They’d been sparked by her threatening to butcher Pearson and serve him up as a roast for all the rest to eat. Gave him insight that her survival instinct ain’t lessened any; all’s she needed were the excuse to act on it. The same sorts of instincts what let each of them live in ways what ignored society’s laws to favour their own creed.

Were odd to think now on how she’d changed, gone from spitting disdain at outlaw living to spitting fire and risking freedom to haul him down off that mountain, get him at least to his feet for all he were unsteady and sick. All them things he couldn’t recall with more than a blurred idea, but he’d like as not cursed her plenty. Arthur’d been wrapped up in dying, thinking it the only way he could serve out what he’d done, but she’d kept on even when he yelled at her that morning – hell, were it only that morning they’d been in Van Horn? Felt like a lifetime ago he’d woken up, addled and sore, to see she’d foiled his end to living and he’d lashed out at her. He’d, as Hosea would’ve described it, behaved right badly, even for the type of degenerate he styled himself to be. There were personal codes, morals what said things you could and could not do to friends and family, and he’d done them to Sadie. That she’d worked her way into that consideration – friends, he measured, to the least – came by her risking trusting him with what she’d needed before the Hollow burned and now, he supposed, by ignoring him when he told her to scram. Gang were done, sure, but she weren’t and figuring it were playing hell on his processing of things.

“Fine,” seemed the least of what he ought say, a concession more than anything, but Arthur’d worked hard to not be a great feeler. Charmer? Sure, sometimes. But only Mary’d ever got him talking serious about what went on under the way he acted, and never more than a few statements before it’d become clear she’d never quite understand why it was he lived the way he did. Eliza and he’d kept a pragmatic sense about it, his devotion more to what he’d done by giving her child over what he felt for her alone; maybe he could’ve delved more in time, but she were dead and his son, too. Always easier to keep himself distant, so’s only he had to deal with the hardship what came of emotions; it made it simple to follow Dutch and keep moving ahead, leave them ideas of feeling in the dust behind them.

The rattle of a pitchfork hitting the ground saved Arthur from thinking more on the emotions what ran beneath it all, raised the idea of an alarm that had them both straighten. She tried to stand and face what came, but winced and fell back on the bale when her side screamed fierce at her; he turned his eyes to the barn door what’d been pulled open wide enough to let one and only one person come in, the movement of it triggering the impromptu alarm she’d set not ten minutes prior. Reflex had his hand grip the revolver at his hip, ready to draw as both their attention snapped to the figure what shambled his way through.

“I got you that water,” Seamus drawled, setting down a bucket of cold water and a cast iron pot without a lid, steam raising up from the water within.

Arthur’d stood by then and walked over to claim the two. “Appreciate it,” said with a nod, careful as he moved not to spill any of the hot water most of all. These he went and placed near Sadie, who looked ready to stand again; he stopped her with a hand on her shoulder, a short shake of his head. This got him sharp, angry look, but he kept his pressure there so she’d not risk opening the wound further.

“Since I was over at the kitchen, got you two some food, too,” drawled Seamus ever on, stepped outside a moment to bring in another pot, this one smaller and looked like it had the remnants of the ranchers’ breakfast left on the fire the whole day. Boiled oats and some fruits, he figured, but beat canned meats and beans.

“That’s real decent of you,” he afforded back, ignoring that Sadie’d tried to pry off his hand with hers.

“You won’t be saying that once you try it,” he said with a slow chuckle. Set the pot down on the bale Arthur’d been sat on, then moved on past them. “I’ll be taking them horses now and leaving you folk be. Remember: Don’t be wandering around at night unless you want to get shot.”

“What the hell, Arthur?” Sadie demanded after Seamus moved past, though she’d given up on trying to push. “I ain’t dead.”

“That hole in you’ll say different if you keep trying to move about. You, stay here,” he said, pointing at her. Arthur took a moment to close the barn door up proper, leaned up the pitchfork again. Seamus worked quick with the horses, drawing them out to the corral through the other wide doors. Once he’d left, these doors were easy enough to close and he leaned a hatchet up there in mimicry of her alarm system.

“Bit of walking ain’t going to ruin me,” she’d retorted, but her tongue had a sharpness her body didn’t possess the follow-through on. Sadie’d stayed there, using her hand to wrap up the beef again and toss it down onto the saddlebags for later, appetite less than what it ought be.

“Sure,” he agreed. “Same’s a bit of coughing ain’t gonna be the death of me.” Bit of a wry twist there that shut her next reply quick and he took the win, small as it were. “I done and promised to do better. It so hard for you to try the same?” Arthur walked back over to where she sat, nodded to her injury. “Either way, it’s best we get that dealt with first.”

Sadie looked odd at him, like she wanted something sensible to shut down his logic, but he’d nailed it good and she ended up frowning, a non-committal shrug being the best she mustered. She muttered that she’d be fine, but at least tossed her braid back over her shoulder where it’d be out of the way and slowly peeled away the compress from her side. She started to roll up the hem of her shirt so’s she could get a better look at the clotted blood and bits of thread from her makeshift bandage that had dried in a right mess as they travelled.

Mindful that it weren’t right to be staring at a lady, Arthur turned his back to her and hooked his hands in his belt, ready if she needed something and respecting enough to not foist help on her. Weren’t long before he heard her let out a frustrated breath and a curse. “Give me a hand here, Arthur,” she said, quiet in that she’d no love of pleading or needing help. “I ain’t able to see much here.” The exasperation mingled with the exhaustion, her normal sort of smart remarks repressed by the resignation that he’d been right in that she needed to get this at least cleaned up.

Arthur chuckled at the words and moved about the barn, pulled an oil lamp down from one of them walls and turned up the wick to brighten the space about them. He turned round, looked her in the face, and near smiled. “I hear sight’s helped if you got light,” said as a bit of jest as the sun’s final rays faded outside them walls, evening drawing on down into night.

Pained and pale as her face had drawn, Sadie still had the feistiness in her to throw the discarded compress at him. Aim weren’t great and it fell short as he walked over and placed the lantern down near where she sat. “Very funny,” she said dryly. She shifted some, turned profile so he could get a good look at her side, and used her hands to roll up and hold the hem of her shirt away. It were good as ruined, bloodied all down the one side, but neither of them had clean clothing to spare, so it’d have to last.

Kneeling down beside her, Arthur whistled low and rested back on his heels, taking a long look at the broken flesh and blood. He pulled off his gloves and rinsed his hands quick in the water, hotter than hell’s coffee right then, before he started checking the extent of her injury. There were a long rent in her side, five or so inches long, but he’d measure a guess as two fingers deep. Leaning in closer and keeping his eyes on the wound, not the fact that her skin as it stretched away from the gunshot were otherwise clear and fine, he could see the blueish red of bruising spreading along the edges of it. The smell of blood, sharp and ferric, were clear, but absent were the scent of rot or shit; this lent comfort that she’d been shot near, but not through, her gut. If it’d gone through her stomach, she’d’ve been good as dead this late in the day, poisoned by her own body leaking through her. The whole mess were an angry blend of blood and skin and it lessened any surprise to why she’d both a short temper and a real tired look about her, but looked better than it likely felt.

“You looking to get a scar to rival Marston?” he muttered with a chuckle. Seemed best to keep her mind on some inane sorts of teasing over what he were about to do; weren’t full easy, his head spinning some from all the movement he’d made of late, but she needed the help and he’d provide it. Least he could do, after all his figuring earlier made it clear he owed her more than just his life, but the chance of it too. Arthur grabbed one of the cloths he’d pulled from the liquor earlier and soaked it in the hot water a minute.

“Not everything’s a competition,” she shot back with a roll of her eyes. “Not like how you boys think it is.” Sadie shook her head; all that, and still seemed she couldn’t resist adding with a feral smile: “And if it were, you know I’d win.”

“Sure.” That he let her have, busied with squeezing out excess water from the cloth. He looked at the wound again, figuring how best to approach it; he weren’t some fancy doctor with a degree, but he’d done his share of cleaning and stitching himself and others before. Best thing were to get it clear of the dried bits and dirt, though it’d be far from a walk in the park. “This here’s going to hurt something fierce,” he warned.

“I know,” was out of her mouth almost before he’d said his piece, sign that she’d apprehension and readiness both for what were about to come. Sadie moved her gaze up and away from her side, staring resolutely ahead. She had her hands hiking up the hem of her shirt that side, fabric rolled and fingers clenched tight over it. Pressure there were hard, skin gone white as she clenched her hands; he reached out, put his free hand over both of hers. Maybe it were a reassuring gesture, or maybe he was keeping her from hitting him upside the head once he started and the pain hit, but she let it happen.

Arthur gave her no more warning, moving to press the hot cloth across the top of the wound, letting the water soak in a bit and soften up the mess. Couple rinses of it and he was able to start digging at it, hand working with firm pressure to make sure none of the dirt crept deeper into her side. Sadie sucked in her breath, fingers twitching under his hand, but she held still – resigned, he supposed, to what had to be done for the sake of living. There were times that she’d let out that breath, only to hitch it up again when he rinsed and reapplied the cloth to the task.

“You and I ain’t ridden much together when Colm’s boys had me, huh?” he asked after a bit, tossing the first cloth aside as a ruined rag. He picked up a fresh one and soaked it good. He felt her hands, arms tense at the name; he’d picked it because of the anger, knowing that sometimes that was what made pain nearer to tolerable.

“No,” she said, that rage still stained in her voice all these weeks after the hanging. “I told Mary-Beth you’s were fools for riding out that day.” Like as not would’ve ridden out herself to shoot him had she been given half the chance.

Arthur chuckled at that, pressing the fresh cloth hard into the wound to get some flecks of gunpowder and debris out. “Yeah, same as I told Dutch,” he replied. “That damned par-lay out in the Heartlands were about the stupidest thing I’d seen him do.” He’d not gone and stopped it from happening though; foolishly agreed to play the shooter for when shit rolled downhill, only they’d expected that, hoped for it, and the shit rolled straight at him instead. “Colm always was looking at new, fancy ways to double-cross folks; I guess it were just one more damn fool thing he dragged us into.”

There were a break in the cleaning, Arthur turning his head aside as a cough came up and rattled his chest along with its buddies. Goddamn but he hated that, and the way it left him feeling like his lungs were going to collapse in on itself for lack of air, and he focused some on breathing before starting up again. “Anyway,” he said, dismissive of it, determined to focus on her right then. “This here’s reminding me of when his boys shot me.” Arthur’d never talked much of it, not being the story-telling type like Uncle or them others; only reason he brought it up here was to keep her mind distracted from the hurt what came with the cleaning. Her side was full soaked from the water now, but the dirt and blood were coming out with less effort each time. “Used one of them fancy carbines, shot me straight through the shoulder.” He paused briefly here, thumped his hand against his chest where they’d gotten him. “Next thing I remember’s being hung upside down like some prize game and Colm thinking he could beat some sense into me.” He huffed in a breath, almost a laugh that died quick; never talked on it around the others, never spoke to what he’d done to them that kept him. They died, he didn’t; seemed a neat enough solution. It’d been a pity then that Colm’d gone, left before he got free; would’ve enjoyed cutting his throat for thinking to bait out Dutch for the law to take.

“The beating never took,” Sadie remarked, voice tense as the pain and the anger blended.

“I ain’t much one to like his sort of sense,” he replied, cleaning the edges of the wound now. Torn in spots, burned clean where it’d tried to enter. Looked to him like a high calibre bullet to blame; one what left a rut dug into her, but no tip or shattered bits of bullet. Lucky shot for hitting her, lucky shot for her being set to heal from it. “Colm was always about the money and ain’t ever understood more than that.” He tossed the second rag aside, most of the dirt cleared away; third one he wetted and used more to pick up traces of fresh blood and debris missed by them others. “Anyways,” he continued, clearing his throat to head off another cough. “Back then, I used an old metal file heated up on a candle to clean up that bullet hole. Poured some powder from a slug into it and put fire to it so’s to cauterize the mess. Dutch taught me that trick when I was first with the gang to keep from bleeding out. Did its job,” added with a roll of his shoulder. Stiff and sore sometimes, but he’d the range of motion back.

“Way I recall,” she said, moving gaze over to him, “you was sceptic when you rode in.” There were lines of tension drawn clear in her face, but he figured a flare or two of wit showed in her eyes. “Seeing as you was fevered almost a week from that fine treatment, I’ll not be wanting the gunpowder burn, Mr. Morgan.” Clear that she meant his duties here were limited to cleaning the wound, not treating it.

That time, his chuckle were a real thing that her dry words sparked. Arthur didn’t much recall her being around when he was recovering, but he didn’t much recall them first few days; Grimshaw’d set the ladies to watch over through the worst parts, but Swanson’s liberal application of morphine made his recollection blurred, more hallucinations than realizations.

“I weren’t saying you need do it,” he said, giving the cloth once last rinse, the wound one last wipe clean. Leaked blood still, but weren’t flowing free like earlier and the filth were gone from it. “There we go,” he said, dropping the cloth in the water. He kept his hand holding her two down a moment, free one probing gently at the ragged edges of the wound. “Should heal up okay if we can’t get you a doctor’s touch, but we ought to flush it with something a mite stronger.” His bit said, he released her hands and rinsed both of his in the bucket of now warm, bloody water. “Got plenty more of them cloths from the liquor to use as a bandage. You get a needle and some thread, I could stitch it up so’s it don’t scar too bad.”

Sadie shook her head at the last bit of an offer, like as not done with being poked and prodded at for the time being; she let go one hand from her shirt and reached for the crate of liquor, pulling one of the deshrouded bottles of moonshine out. “Stronger, right?” she said, though he’d the sense it were more to herself than him.

Arthur looked at her, eyes narrowed, and near took the bottle out of her hand; didn’t quite trust the way she looked at it, like serious consideration were being given to the idea. “Weren’t what I meant when I said that,” he cautioned as she used her teeth to pull the cork out, looking over the bottle without much seeming to see it. “You mind that’ll hurt much as being shot did, even cut with water.”

She nodded and set the bottle down a moment, looked around her for something until her gaze settled on his discarded gloves. Thick leather and tough, though worn as much as the rest of him, they seemed to suit her and she reached for one. Sadie lifted it, looked it over, then put it between her teeth; weren’t much time from then for him to react before she had the bottle in hand again and poured half of it clear over her side.

Arthur jerked forward, half tripped over himself to get to her, and grabbed her shoulder with one hand. The other caught the bottle when she dropped it, the sharp tone of her scream muffled down by the glove in her mouth as she doubled over, eyes squeezed shut at the sheer, sudden agony of the alcohol plied against broken skin and muscle. “Christ, woman!” he hissed, sitting down next to her on the bale, straightening her up some to see how bad it were. “What’d you just say about it ain’t a competition?”

Sadie pressed her head against his chest, instinct full driving her as a choking sob followed the scream. Her hands, let go of the bottle and shirt both, grabbed at his arms like he might hold her there, keep her from disappearing in the storm of nerves and fire what the moonshine’d triggered. Her fingers pressed hard against him, like as not would leave bruises, but he didn’t stop her. Reflex had him pull her against him as she fought the screaming and the sobbing, shoulders shaking with the effort of it. They stayed like that some moments, his holding tight about her as Sadie trembled, doing her best to choke back them sobs. He moved careful through it, let the palm of his hand rest soothing between her shoulder blades, worked a small circle with it as he muttered just as many curses as fool platitudes what might make better her world that exact moment.

Never good at watching a woman suffer, and found it harder with Sadie, though it’d been her fool action what caused it and him the fool what couldn’t mend it. Arthur did what he could to help her through it, ignoring the damp press of tears on his shirt, them being inevitable when nerves were pushed that far past their limits. Part of him wanted to skip back to the moment she’d been shot, so’s he could visit real pain on the jackass what done it and avoid all this, but all he could do were hold her there for a time, until her breathing started to soothe and the shaking slowed to a tremble of her shoulders.

Sadie shifted a bit, though not full clear of him, and one hand let his arm go so’s she could pull the glove out of her mouth; the marks of her teeth were clear and deep in the leather, it’d take time to work them out, but she’d not bit clean through. “There was something,” she tried, heaving breaths as her heart slowed its panicked pounding, “about a bandage?”

Arthur nodded and slowly let her go, allowed her to rest her hand back on the hay bale and let her weight go there, her other hand moving to pick up the fallen hem of her shirt so he could patch her up for the night. Her head she kept bowed, bits of her hair freed from its braid hanging forward as she put her focus to the in and out of breath in her lungs, the suppression of shaking fingers through will alone.

Didn’t take much from there to set her right; he used the cloth, gauzy and light, to roll a compress for the rent in her side, now a bright and angry red from the harshness of the alcohol burning it. Held it in place as he re-purposed the rest into strips to wrap around her torso and hold it in place. When he were done, he moved careful to pry her hands off the hem of her shirt, letting it drop harmlessly back in place. All her clothes were good as ruined from blood and dust and he knew the chill of night’d nip at her wound, so shrugged off his jacket and put it down on the bale next to her.

Arthur left her be then, stepping off to the far side of the carriage to give her the space to pull herself together without his prying eyes, and leaving before any thought to shove the jacket back at him. Kept him away from her so’s he’d not curse her hasty action; he knew the kinds of pain she’d just dosed herself with and that’d be punishment enough. Fool of a kid he’d once been, mistook a cup of ‘shine for water and splashed it on himself to clean up his face after a fight left his lip split and a cut down his temple. Hurt like the dickens and he’d cussed himself for hours. Hosea’d laughed himself blue when he heard of it and told him how the ‘shine would make sure no infection took, at least, but placations ain’t mended his young man’s pride about it. Sadie, bless or curse her, had gone and done it ten times worse to herself and she’d done it with determination writ in her face, knowing that more hurt would be coming from it. Damn fool woman and twice as strong as most folk he’d known; devil alone knew how she did it and he’d left Arthur no hints for all he’d been pounding on hell’s door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two's about the steadiest run I'll be making for chapters here on out; three wiped my brain and it took some days to get back to writing. These ones are a bit longer, sorting out some of the issues that they encountered with McIntosh & them. 
> 
> We are now 1/4 of the way through notebook number one for typing. My ulnar tunnel's acting up, but should still be set for two chapters next week. ILUall and look forward, always, to sharing more!
> 
> Happy Canadian Thanksgiving! We have spiced pumpkin cake with chocolate icing and I am going to roll around happily with it now and wrap myself up in a blanket.
> 
> \- Kichi @[KichiWhy](https://twitter.com/KichiWhy)


	12. Chapter VIII: Emerald Station - 05: Whiskey and A Cigarette

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The immediate risks tended and their night secured allows both Arthur and Sadie some time to breathe and relax, but also to push off those worrisome truths and doubts what nibbled at the edge of consciousness. Also, there's whiskey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

Damn stubborn woman.

Arthur lit himself a cigarette, crumpled and crooked from its time in his pockets, and leaned back against the wheel of the stagecoach. It was his way to leave Sadie space to collect herself and let him turn his thoughts towards things he could ponder without bearing them down on what he’d just witnessed. The mess of an ambush that’d found them on the road bothered him still and made better fodder to think on than the sharp, suppressed agony he’d heard break from Sadie, muffled damn little by the leather held tight between her teeth.

Bad luck on any day to be caught in a robbery, worse luck to be the (assumed) innocent bystanders meant to be cover for contraband cargo; certain indignities came about it on a professional level no less, being seen as quick money. Weeks before this and they’d have been left untouched for fear of repercussions. Mind that they’d have not hidden themselves in such plain sight, nor like to have travelled with no numbers to back them up. The only good turn he figured on this came by it not being targeted specific to him or Sadie. Small favour, that, after the toll it drained from his strength and her blood.

Them moving three thousand dollars in such a loose setup, with near as no guards or like protections, were signs either of damn complex plan or a damn stupid idea and he couldn’t figure which. Never’d heard of these Cartwrights before; figured they were minor players grown bolder as gangs and families fell around them – courtesy of Dutch’s meddling and the gang’s following of it. With all the gaps left in the ranks of these criminal endeavours, there’d never be a shortage of hands wanting grabbing for the threads of jobs and illicit monies. That much truth he could swear to until the cows come home and then beyond it. Trouble being that newfound influence could lead to vengeful retribution on any what stood in their way in the rush to build a reputation worth fearing; he worried some that this whole stagecoach dilemma’d come back to haunt them if McIntosh didn’t keep his mouth shut. Too many times in the crosshairs of late made him jumpy, apt to embrace the paranoia and pin it square in place, use that to justify doing whatever it took to get them all safe. No. Get them both safe; the correction played out in his head, numbers of the gang dwindled to two survivors with pitiful odds, and a third safely removed to Wapiti.

More trouble were come by the question of how far he was supposed to go thinking on this? What’d once been probable trouble now stood as a possible storm on the horizon, but how big of a picture did he need to be looking at here? Arthur weren’t competition to them, being that he and Sadie were lying low and hardly no threat to organized gangs or families. They’d money to last them some time, meaning there’d be no robberies to commit for the now; that put them both on a whole different field then the greedy, grubby hands fighting over the remains of the Grays, the Braithwaites, the Brontes, and all them other sorts that he’d help slaughter all along the road to hell, which weren’t paved with no intentions but sin in his books.

All Sadie’d told him to do was survive, not thrive, and for that he’d need to beat back the weakness of his lungs so’s he could have that second chance she’d scraped out of the grave for him. Second chance at life; some part of him thought it funny, being a literal chance and some part of him afraid, maybe, that it were a metaphorical sort in the same fell swoop. Plenty of chances to cut and run had come up before, but his loyalty always rode him back into camp with the latest haul or lead. Now, all that reversed with no camp to ride to and that all left him with cutting to run as the only option. What would he do? What could he do? Hell, what _should_ he do?

Arthur shook his head and drew quick from the cigarette, ignoring the itch of the smoke in his throat. The trail of thoughts he’d slipped down seemed as appealing as reliving what he’d just stood by and let Sadie do to herself; he pushed them both away, put his focus back to this new gang and the survivor they’d let run free. That McIntosh’d sworn they were unlucky bystanders with no targets but that of opportunity hanging over them and maybe he’d have to be satisfied with that. Long as they weren’t being chased or shot at, then maybe it didn’t matter so much as him focusing on the living part of what he’d promised. And it were in that living part that he’d thoughts to help Sadie through, too. Her being shot, in the whole, came by travelling with him and that fell on his shoulders to make right.

The shrill shatter of a glass bottle sounded on the far side of the coach as she cursed and threw aside the remainder of that moonshine to break and seep into the hard ground. Vengeful airs floated about her; seemed she had some of her spark back, then, and he could hear her standing, starting to move some. There came a pause, heavy with its absence of words, before she spoke up. “Thank you, Arthur.” Sadie’s voice carried through the air, muffled some by the stage and whatnot between them, and sounded rough at his best measure of it. No sarcasm, no overdone gratitude; they were words what meant what they literally meant and no twisting about done in them. He heard her boots moving about, slow and uneven footsteps as she come around the end of the stagecoach. Each step set with a deliberate aim, each one focused on after the one before’d been safely made; told him plenty that she felt the rawness of what she done and would for some time.

She’d splashed some water on her face to clear away the smudges of tears and her hair’d been tucked back again, strands pushed up under the rim of her hat. What surprised him, but in a grateful shade of sorts, was that she’d left aside her pride to put on his jacket and pull it about her, hiding the worst of the bloodstains that’d spread on her shirt. It were too big for her by some few sizes and she’d not bothered much to settle it right on her shoulders, but she wore it and that suited him fine. It’d give her better protection through the night than the soaked shirt and better modesty, though there were hardly a horde of men here to be leering at her. What she had bothered on, however, were to liberate one of the fine whiskey bottles tucked in with the moonshine and had pried it open, even taken a couple swigs of it before she come walking around.

Stepping up next to him, she grabbed the cigarette out from between his lips and pulled a deep drag off it herself. “You call me the fool,” she remarked, smoke wisping out amidst her words. She held out the bottle for him, a trade of sorts, and exhaled the rest of the smoke with a huff. The sharpness of her tone had gone and faded, worn down by the day and the hurt it’d brought; she berated him, but her heart weren’t full in it and that much he could sense. “You ain’t hardly breathing and you’re smoking one of these.”

Arthur took the bottle, snorted a laugh, and gave a shake of his head; but he let her keep the cigarette while he drank of the whiskey instead. Sharp and smooth all the way through, it went straight to his gut with that familiar fiery comfort; a good bottle, that were sure, which could be worth its weight in gold to some folk. He wondered, brief, how many of them to were in that crate and what they could sell each for if they needed the money. “Plenty of doctors say it ain’t bad,” he replied, handing her back the bottle and reclaiming the mostly spent cigarette. “Been told tobacco calms the temper and all sorts of things. Why’s it so fool to think it’d help the lungs too?”

Sadie shook his head at that claim and drank instead; when she turned back, it was with a gesture of the half-empty bottle for him to follow. “Come on,” she said. “We ought to eat that gruel he brought.” Pale and drawn she were, and firmly determined to push past what’d just been done by avoiding the talk, focusing on the actions what’d get them through the night. “Got to get you eating again,” added, a tired reminder that he were ahead of her in the needing food category, courtesy of that damn sickness taking all but skin and bones it felt.

Arthur thought to argue it, his appetite still stunted plenty, but after watching what she’d just inflicted on herself to avoid infection, he were coming to understand what exact lengths Sadie Adler intended to go in helping him beat back death for that damn second chance at life. Fair were the bare minimum of what he could be in the face of all that, after what she’d done and seemed ready to sacrifice. So, all he did were toss down the cigarette, grinding it out with his heel, and followed her to see what overcooked oats had been left as (dis)favour to them both.

-

The night went on as much unassuming as the day’d been exciting; ground oats boiled throughout the day turned bland and heavy in their stomachs, barely made palatable by the liberal application of fine whiskey traded between them. They each also drank deep of the clean, cold water brought earlier and then used it to clean up some. Mostly, though, they went back to drinking the whiskey for the warmth it coursed through them and the easing of the tension from their day. For Sadie, the sharp liquor soaked in quick and numbed the hot iron burn of her alcohol-aggravated wound. For Arthur, it dragged him closer to sleep after a too long day what followed too many long weeks; he turned in first, a couple more bales lined up to keep him from sleeping on the cold, hard ground, and she only let him rest after he agreed to pad it further with the beaten old canvas bedroll she’d pulled from Bob’s saddle.

Sadie figured she’d be headed to sleep soon as she could get her thoughts to calm some, but the whiskey ain’t helped quite enough there. Damn but she’d been a fool to upturn a bottle of moonshine over it; she knew that, though she’d not put the admission to words as they spent their evening talking on inconsequential matters, neither of them wanting to make anything of it. Happened too much around Arthur that she’d act best she thought fit the moment, but ever it turned out to be like bolting off a cliff at a full run and no rope to catch her. All she’d been thinking when she uncorked the moonshine was of how she’d not be able to help him if she developed an infection and fell ill herself. She solved that problem the first way she figured how: By burning out any possibility of it; no questions or second thoughts, only a damnable screaming agony.

The last of the whiskey drained away and her face run hot as she thought to how it’d done more than hurt. The instant it happened, her grip lost on the bottle before it were full emptied, she’d been sorely tempted to take a knife and carve away the whole of her side if that’d make it stop. Clean or not, in that instant it weren’t worth the pain what blew past her limits and whited the world out. When it resolved back around her, it were Arthur that’d stepped in like he might stem the pain. He’d let her near claw marks in his flesh with the desperation what drove her, firmly put his arms around her as she cried like some child with a skinned knee, for all it were a fiery pain that roared in her ears, and done his best to soothe all the foolishness she’d brought on herself.

The emptied bottle dropped from her hand, rolled away quietly into the darkness at the edge of the lamp’s glow, and she looked over to check on Arthur. He’d lain flat on his back, sleeping sound and with a breathing what struggled less, but were weaker than she’d like. She felt a spike of fear that it could slow to nothing, letting him slip back into death’s embrace, if she didn’t keep her eye on him. Chiding that he needed rest, where his body might relax and give up the fight, seemed foolish in the face of it.

No.

Sadie rubbed the heel of her hand across her forehead; she knew she weren’t thinking straight from the whiskey and the hurt. All night and most of the day, her thoughts had been off and had her making fool decisions, taking fool actions like with the ‘shine. When she’d come to her senses, it’d even tempted her to stay right there, holding to that safe feeling Arthur gave off whenever he tried to help soothe all them things that were wrong in her life. One more fool action, to step off from that, killed off the chance and now she were alone, wearing his jacket to stave off the cold, and wondering if there’d be a time when she didn’t take the damn fool’s route first around him.

The whiskey, drank down the way liquor were meant to be handled, had at least calmed her some and blunted the edge of questioning what rose time and again in her head. Made it harder to get to her feet, sure, and walking were more circuitous of a route than when sober, but it helped. She managed to stay standing some few minutes that time and grabbed the oil lantern before limping over to where Arthur slept.

Couldn’t shake the thinking that he’d maybe stop breathing if she didn’t keep close eye on him, so she went and turned the wick down to nothing, set it on the ground nearby. Then, exhausted and hurting, she assuaged herself by sitting with her back up against his poor excuse for a bed. She quick had her revolver drawn and rested careful in her lap and made sure she had clear sightlines on the two main entry points of the barn. Her other hand rested, on instinct and habit of the hours before, over the dressing at her side as she ignored that pulsating ache what radiated from beneath it.

This being the best she could manage, Sadie let her chin drop down nearer her chest and closed her eyes to let herself drift some. The slow wheezing in his chest played a strange sort of lullaby, lulling her away from them abstract fears and hateful questions she kept throwing at herself. The steadiness of it, a rhythm of sorts, plied odd reassurance that the tuberculosis ain’t claimed him yet and that were enough to lower her guard, pulling her mind down into a murky sort of sleep.

-

There was cold, darkness shrouded all about her, and she’d no sense of time no more. All’s she saw was the reassuring look as he sent her down into the cellar, where she’d get out the shotgun and be ready to chase these folk off if they was trouble, then the thud of the cover, muffled sounds as he kicked a skin over it, dragged something over top that she couldn’t budge from beneath. Then some words, bit of them from her Jake and the rest from these strangers what called frozen and frightened in tones neither of them much believed.

Then there was the yelling.

A gunshot. Two more what followed.

Sadie felt a dread certainty in that moment, stumbled down the short ladder stairs with her hand clamped sudden and firm over her mouth to keep from sound what’d notice her to them. Heard them laughing, raucous and prideful over the killing of her husband, then their heavy feet stampeded in and about the house what’d been, moments ago, her home. All them took her food and gorged on it, looted what valuables and monies they’d saved up and stored about the place.

Silent she stayed them next days, accompanied by darkness, cold, and the surety that she were widowed and might well be dead or worse when they discovered her. Tears and grief were like to make her cry out and so she bit down on her lip for hours at a time, until shredded bits of it’d come off with a bloodstained taste. Eyes wide spent days staring up to the floorboards, silent tears shed each time they talked of how they shot the bastard what lived there.

Time crawled slower the longer it went and they all laughed; one of them dragged her Jake’s body out to the cold, while another claimed his gun. Fat and foul were what she pieced together of him with the glimpses given, knowing she’d never forget this devil in her house.

There were moments when they quieted and she held her breath, terrified they might hear her heartbeat and drag her out from hiding. It’d always start up again, the laughter and the belching; left her shrinking back to the coldest corners of the cellar, arms wrapped about her knees as she rocked back and forth like some child, begging for something to end it, or end her. Please.

Frigid darkness and she’d no sense of exact when the looting stopped and the shooting started anew, but it felt like the first night come full circle to haunt her. She clamped hands over her ears, pleading in the quiet that offered her for escape. Salvation. Jake.

The skin flipped back and the hatch came up; light flooded down and she screamed, lashed out a the one that tried to pull her out. Fighting. Fearful. Damning them all, no matter how they tried to calm her. Heard the one laughing, the other what shouted at him to knock it off; and that fear of days locked away burned fast into fiery hate as she threw all she could at them.

-

Sadie woke with a start, light shining sharp in her eyes as the barn door were hauled open. Addled by the nightmare, she jerked aside and picked up the gun in her lap with a white-knuckled grip. Sound nearer an angry scream escaped her as she lifted it, searched for a target with her hands shaking.

“Easy, Sadie,” that were the second voice from the end of her recollections, the one what tried to defuse a situation ready to blow, and she looked about. Took a shake of her head to shed the shroud of sleep, replaced by the dulled pain of a hangover, but she resolved finally that it was Arthur stood in her line of sight, arms half raised in cautious surrender to keep from being shot on accident. Or purpose.

Stared at him good and long, she did, as her mind caught up with the waking senses and pushed down the sleeping fears. They were at Emerald Ranch, not the Adler one, and them O’Driscolls what destroyed her life were cold and dead; reminded of that small comfort, she started to breathe again. Sadie eased back on her revolver, set it in her lap again as the whiskey continued to claim its penalties for taking the pain out of her side and placing it square between her eyes. She groaned and put her hand against her forehead, pressing the heel of it there though it’d keep the ache centered up top. “Thought you was someone else,” she muttered.

Arthur stood opposite her, their shared saddlebag packed and slung over his shoulder sure sign he’d been awake a good while. “Sure,” he said. “You was having quite the dreams, by them sounds you were making.” His voice had more strength to it this morning, something she tried to focus on over the hellish recollections sleep’d brought her. “You alright?”

Pieces of her protested the idea that she’d not be fine after all they’d been through and she waved him off. “Nothing new to it,” she replied, stretching out her legs slowly. She’d fallen asleep propped there against the bales and must’ve stayed that way through the night. Her knees complained something fierce, but not so much as her side cried loud foul when she tried to stand up.

“Don’t be rushing it, Sadie,” he cautioned, looking sharp at her. Arthur held out a small bottle her way, recognizable as that laudanum blend she’d foisted on him at Van Horn; there weren’t much left to it, maybe one dose, two if they was light on it. “Drink this and we’ll head for the station.”

“I ain’t needing it,” she said, voice rough from sleep and whiskey both.

Arthur snorted, near choked on the laugh he swallowed back. “You need it more than I do,” were his take on it, “and that ain’t a lie.” Despite that, he fell off pushing it, tucked the bottle back in the saddlebags and held out his hand. “Come on. We don’t get moving soon and Seamus’ll be feeding us to the pigs for overstaying the welcome. And you and me, we got a train to catch.”

Pride’d seen her refuse these sorts of helpful gestures before, but pride’d also figured it fine to pour an undiluted mess of moonshine over an open wound not a day before. Figuring then that maybe pride weren’t worth the hurt it brought, she holstered her gun and reached up to grab the offered hand. Tensing that arm, she pulled herself up much as she could as he hauled back, his other hand steadying her shoulder as she stumbled forward a step, breath hitched at the stabbing stitch in her side.

“How’s the hurting?” he asked. Closer to him, she heard that watery stain to his voice, born of the sickness, but the words were being used with better clarity now. There seemed some concern there too, or so she fooled herself, over whether she were as likely to kick the bucket as him.

“Feels like some damn fool shot me,” she said dryly.

“Same damn fool did,” he confirmed, half a smile playing about his lips at the twist of humour.

Sadie kept hold on him a moment, steadying herself, and a moment more because she weren’t quite sure this sense a reality or some trick of a dream chasing after restless nightmares. Pain of waking sure felt real, but the warmth what came from the press of his hand, were something different. An outside sensation that let her ground herself in this being a reality.

“That explains it,” she muttered, deciding to go with the lighter words. They’d had days enough of bad tidings and it felt good to tease some, offset the hurt of her side and the hangover in her head. Sadie smiled, thin but there, and let go of him, started to shrug off the jacket she’d kept on through the night to hand it back.

“Keep it,” Arthur said, quick and firm. “The rest of you’s a right mess. We’ll both be less conspicuous if you ain’t walking about with a bloody shirt what’s been shot up.”

Took her a moment to process the sense of that, that she’d no clothes to replace the bloodied shirt and the jacket would serve best to conceal that either of them’d been waylaid by bad luck. Sadie nodded and moved to pull it back up on her shoulders, but he stopped her with a hand on her arm. “What?”

Here he seemed less comfortable about the exchange, but determined to see through over what were driving it. “We ought check it,” he said, clearing his throat. “Weren’t bleeding much last night, but don’t want it to have bled through.” Bit awkward, he sounded, to be asking to look at her bandaged side after he’d been the one that cleaned it out and wrapped it up. He’d have seen plenty more in the process and that didn’t bother her none.

“Fine,” she agreed. Sadie pulled her arm free of his grasp, dropped her shoulder so that the jacket’d fall a bit further open on the left side.

This allowed him to see the bandage and he knelt down, carefully lifted the hem of her shirt to assess the dressing. Oddly gentle were his hands as he pressed careful on it, pausing when that elicited a sharp hiss of pain from her, but she held off the instinct to push his prying touch away. “Bit of blood, but it ain’t much,” he said, pulling her shirt down again and standing up. “It’ll hold the day, and then we can get you a doctor to look at it.” He reached out, helped her pull the heavy leather jacket back up almost without thinking; she didn’t stop him either. Seemed easier, like she weren’t carrying the full burden of their survival no more.

Sadie found her hat, fallen off as it’d done some point in the night, and pressed it firm on her head. Rubbed some of that restless sleep from her eyes and nodded towards the opened door, ready to bear her share of that burden still. “Come on, then,” she said, remembering they still had steps left to their journey. With a wry sort of smile, she added: “Like you said, we got a train to catch.”


	13. Chapter VIII: Emerald Station - 06: Revised Resolutions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With storms stirring in the south, it comes time to revisit their plans and the ideas of a safer destination. Arthur suggests a familiar old town and Sadie's not as sure, with recent nightmares having triggered vengeful memories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

There lay an ironic sense to it. ‘We got a train to catch,’ was one of them smartass things he’d said over the years in the minutes before pulling up his mask to rob one lean of all its riches. Felt odd to be knowing that they was, in a sense, on the other side of the table now and dealing with a whole different set of cards. Didn’t much escape him either that this also counted them firmly in the numbers of those sorts he’d robbed before and, after the misfortune of the stagecoach, he’d a wary sense about karma coming straight at him with the same types of reversal here.

Ain’t to be helped, in their situation; Arthur secured the saddlebags over his left shoulder and held out his right to Sadie. He aimed at something of a grin to help lift her the rest of the way out that dark place she’d woken in. “Mrs. Adler,” he proffered, keeping with the ruse of a role set to keep them inconspicuous in the crowds.

She looked at him, expression muddled with something he couldn’t quite figure out before she let herself indulge in the bit of lighter airs, to smile even as she took his arm like some fancy lady might. “Mr. Adler,” she murmured, stepping up alongside him to make their way out the barn. Seamus were walking near, likely checking to make sure they’d left, and he nodded a sort of greeting like it were normal to see strange folk leaving the barn this early in the morning. Weren’t any fanfare that followed them off the ranch’s property and the walk to Emerald Station’d not be long, nor much to speak of he reckoned. The hour being too early for workers and too late for the night’s drunks for either be out or about meant a sort of peace about it.

Were the quiet sort of scene what’d give them some sense of privacy, Arthur figured, to talk over plans and ideas he’d had after waking early in a fit of coughing. Sadie’d been near as dead with as deep her sleep went, head leaned back against his arm from where she’d settled herself down the night. It’d been before the nightmares struck her, the sense of her peaceful and he’d been loathe to disrupt it, so he’d done his best to stifle the coughing and wake for the morning, working on what they’d done and what they’d best next do.

“I been thinking about them assholes yesterday,” he remarked as they walked, slower than he’d been used to, but it were easier on her that way and, well, with his health the way it’d become, better for him. “That kid talked fast about them Cartwrights and I ain’t ever heard that name before. Sounded like they been working up to be one of them big families down south, since the Braithwaites and the Grays are-“ This he tripped on, trying to figure the best way to put a description to families burned and buried by Dutch’s ambitions.

“Dead or mostly dead,” she finished off, bitter some at the path of bodies what’d been left in the van der Linde wake. Sadie weren’t much better herself, being the sort to shoot first and ask questions never, but she were one woman and the gang’d been much more in number. Harder to ignore them corpses as they quickly piled up.

Arthur sighed, shaking his head; the whole mess down in Lemoyne state ought have stopped them all and started them questioning Dutch, but seemed that the deeper in shit they all got, the more his grandiose solutions lured them in. “Hosea and Dutch meddled a right mess there,” he admitted, the same statement a curse at himself too. “Played us all for fool’s as much as them Braithwaites and Grays’d ever been.” Humiliating, it was, to be lauded as a deputy after all his sins. Dutch found the irony downright amusing, something to laugh at over the campfire, but then his mind’d already slipped three miles into crazy. Sane outlaws didn’t go around pretending to be the sheriff’s men. It weren’t done.

Embarrassed still by that, and angry at himself for all he’d not done in stopping it, he let her arm go and stepped a pace to the side; put distance between them as they walked, like it could free her from associating with them stupid decisions he’d made back then. It were an old, familiar way to protect himself by taking on the blame, the foolishness. Reverend Swanson once called it putting himself on the pyre, ready to burn for the sins of him and others. He’d laughed at that, dryly said that burning were what folk like him deserved.

“Point is,” he said, the gruffness rising in his voice like it could cover his tomfoolery, “I’m thinking that south ain’t a safe direction to head just yet. Arthur Morgan’s damn well known that way and tempers’ll still be run hot. Wouldn’t do well to be seen soon just about anywhere in Lemoyne state ‘til that calms down some.”

Sadie limped slow beside him, each step favouring her left; she’d been using his arm some to offset it and it showed now. Still, she didn’t so much raise a fuss over that assistance being taken back. Weren’t her style to cry for help and such meant not uttering a complaint when that all went away. Sure, she could be screaming angry at all sorts of things, but when it weren’t life and death? She’d this way of moving forward like she’d some fear of being mired in if she didn’t. “There ain’t a lot of places where Arthur Morgan’s a stranger,” she said. Maybe it was the pain or the poor company, but she came off callous on how she said it, no matter it were true through and through.

He right then regretted good portions of his blind stupidity what’d looked past all of what Dutch’d been doing, losing his senses bit by bit in front of him, with some fool’s hope that all might turn out right if he just stood with him. Part of that were the guilt, that he’d been a poor son to let one of the two father figures that mattered to him slip so far as to shatter. Separated from him now by distance and ideals, Arthur didn’t feel the same relief as when Lyle Morgan’d been killed. All he had was this sensation of being left behind, heavy and stifling, that dwelled in him; sadness, of a sort, that proved to him more than ever how he weren’t meant for nice things. No family and no surrogates left; no lover and never earned the love of a wife; son born and dead long before he deserved. All he had left were the scars of his sins, the infection in his lungs, and a promise to do his best to fix himself up after a lifetime of failing it.

“I know,” he relented, scratching idle bits of dirt off the bridge of his nose as they walked some further. His ideas seemed a bit less firm than they’d felt in the early hours, with no direction left to go what’d see them safe. Arthur sighed and recalled something told to him alongside a river once. Rustled up a self-effacing sort of laugh, a scratching sound that stumbled into a cough and he spit out the mucus that brought up before he put words to it. “Milton told me I was good for some five thousand dollars in some states. You sure you ain’t wanting to take that bounty and make something out of this mess?”

“I’m sure.” The words too sharp, a warning that his speaking would be taking him into unsafe territory if he kept up. “But if everything else goes to hell,” she added, a deadpan delivered more out of her hangover than her sensible thoughts right then, “you make sure I’m the one what turns you in. Call it retirement planning if you want, but before then? You let me worry about what I done here and you worry about living.”

Seemed they danced some about this topic, like they was at some fancy societal ball and not the grit and grind of survival, and still he’d no conviction it worth all she’d done and were willing to see done. That his living’d be worth the fuss. All the same, he’d no argument that held a candle to that conviction and no reasons that she’d accept to see an end to their arrangement, so all he could do was hold to his word and hope that maybe that’d be good enough.

Arthur pushed past the point then, left that to fester another day before he had it figured, and put his thoughts back to what he’d been planning in them early hours before she woke. “Sure,” was what he gave to soothe her sentiments, then he pushed back to the point he’d aimed for: “Thought on what you said yesterday, about where we’d be best to lay low a while. Then about what that McIntosh said how his employers were set up down south. Ain’t the right direction to head, if that’s true; they’ll be wanting their monies back and who knows how far these folk’ll go if they figure it was us.”

She’d pulled the jacket closed, folded it across her front to stave off the cool morning breeze as they ambled along, him slow and her limping. “Yeah?” Guarded tone that ventured nearer uncertain; seems she’d had similar thoughts, otherwise he’d have been told flat out that her ideas were still the ones they’d go with. Sadie set on a plan couldn’t be budged from it, that he knew.

“Figured maybe people about ain’t so bad, so long as there’re plenty of them that are strangers to the place,” he said. “Fall’s biting the air and ranchers’ll be moving stock to auction before they knuckle down for the winter. Plenty of labour and folk to do it, what’s two more faces in such a crowd?”

Sadie’s eyebrow went up, lines connected quick in her head. “You suggesting we head to _Valentine_?” she asked, and it seemed this were the first time he were the one with the shocking idea – that being her purview most times. The stock town would be plenty busy this time of year, ranchers come in to make up their last bit of cash before the freeze and anywhere there’s money, others’d come to see what they could do to earn it. Steal it too, sure, but he figured they steer clear of payroll runs and the bank, they’d be safer there than other places and might even blend in.

‘Course, it were the first place after Blackwater that the Pinkerton’s tracked them all down and, sure, he’d done his share of shooting folk up there when Milton tried to get Dutch to come all quiet and peaceful-like. But if they played the marriage card she’d set for them, no one’d be the wiser; Adler had no bounties associated with it, name or face. “You think of some place where a couple more folk showing up ain’t going to raise a fuss,” he challenged, a mite defensive on it. “You want Blackwater?” A gesture off to the southwest, like he could point out that richly growing town that still held the gang’s carefully stashed monies, long abandoned amidst the law’s applications of force to keep them out. “Where else’s good, Sadie? You tell me.”

Quick she seemed ready to refute him, with her mouth opened and everything to scuff and scratch it out with what plans she had. Silence, though, said plenty for her and, after a moment, her mouth shut and she looked away, thinking. Running ideas through her head and coming up short on answers, same as he had first few times he worked at the problem. “Won’t be good more than a couple weeks,” came finally, a retort of sorts that said Valentine might buy them some time, but weren’t the answer they both needed. “Folk’ll head out soon as them auctions are done, then we’d stick out like a sore thumb.”

“I ain’t aiming for more than that!” Riled up by talking on it and her giving little to it, he could feel his chest start to kick back, had to turn aside so he could cough some and catch his breath before it full fled on him. Couple steps and he stopped, leaned forward to spit out the grainy phlegm that kept coming up to choke him. Arthur hated it, full stop. And he figured that if they kept on running, then he’d not be keeping his word on getting better and that sat sour and bitter on him. “I just-“ He made a faint gesture at himself, a bit more strength to it when he indicated her side. “We need a couple weeks is all, Sadie. You to get patched up and me...” A shake of his head, having to face that stark reality that he’d pushed too far in the Hollow and barely survived, that he’d not make much further if they didn’t find some place to do more than sleep a few fitful hours. Arthur drew out all of his strength too much and too often before, and all that sleep in Van Horn ain’t replenished him, only made it so’s he could walk, talk, and shoot; being real and fair to her, he’d no strength to last more than a day, maybe two. “Sadie, I’m run dry, ain’t nothing left to draw on.”

This was one of them moments where things could slide either good or bad; the dealer’s cards were dealt and his hand played with his chips all in. The kind of moment when it were all he could do to pray a bit that luck might find him and she’d relent. He felt it and could see in the way her eyes searched his that she did too. For some seconds he held back on breathing, feeling the coughing beat at his chest to get out, but he’d not budge. This call had to be based on what he’d laid out, not buttered up with a fresh dose of pity.

Sadie narrowed her eyes, checked her own cards that ain’t yet been played and weighed them to the strengths and flaws of what he’d said. Pared them against what she’d figured on doing. They were neither of them genius masterminds to play the world like some chess match, but between them they’d best have sense enough to make the right call here. She folded her arms low over her stomach, pinned in the jacket about her midsection and against her wound with a grimace, then she sighed and folded.

“Them O’Driscolls,” she said, the thing that’d been holding her back. “They was big around Valentine before we gutted them.” Venom clung tight to her wards, speaking to the scars and the swearing she’d done so far. “I ain’t full averse to this idea, but it turns out any stragglers turned tail there? I ain’t going to behave, Arthur. You know I can’t.”

That’d ruin their low profile, but it weren’t a thing he’d dare ask her to avoid. Hell, he’d hold them down and let her go to town castrating each of them assholes after what they done. Arthur knew it well, too privy to what precluded her hatred and how she acted when it were time to conclude it; he knew it best, also, to let her because that’d be how she healed. Sadie had to take care of what little of Colm’s boys were left and she had to do it her way. Weren’t something he could stop, if he’d wanted to; she’d like as not kill him if he tried. He respected that she’d done all she’d done, near as admired her strength in doing it, for all that it’d damned them both to gunfire aplenty. Couldn’t say he’d be better about it in her shoes anyhow.

“Alright.” Odd sort way to agree, but he said it with a nod. “You know I ain’t the fool to get between you and killing Colm’s boys,” he added, stopping to let the coughing break from his chest again, heaving breaths in as he stood unsteadily there and fought off the wheezing. “But just so’s we both know,” he added, straightening careful as he waited until he seemed free of any more choking right then. Good, because he’d one point he needed to make so that they both understood it clear and he wanted it to come serious, not sickly. “You kill them O’Driscoll’s all you want, but you hear one whisper of that goddamn Micah Bell’s name? You tell me. I got business to finish with that bastard.”

That were the cost, to him, of letting her risk them both by carrying this hate still; he had his own to deal with, a sort that were a shard of glass stuck deep in him. Arthur needed to carve it out, to do his own gutting of folk – only folk here meant Micah, the rat that’d brought ruin down on them all. Her talking about O’Driscoll’s made it come up, a connection between them that he understood better now that driving need to see it dealt with. All she needed do were accept that and stay out his way on that front, then they’d have the understanding they needed.

-

Fire came up in his eyes, flared hot in his voice when he said the name. The Arthur she’d come to know alive a moment in this pale reflection of him, sick with sweat and slow on breath. Sadie took it, a small comfort, and nodded; her anger ebbed some with her point made, same as it eased her fears that she’d missed some O’Driscoll along the way and wouldn’t be ready to rest until they was dead too. Ready to scream, she’d been, when putting that forward, but she ought have known it’d be less a fight with Arthur. He’d been there. Fought beside her when she done the worst things anyone could do to a person. Apart from herself, he was the only one what’d made more than some small part of that journey with her and, by the horrible things she did any time she caught wind of Colm’s boys, the only one what had witnessed her need to seem the suffered long before she made them dead.

“Seems fair,” she agreed, head canted to the side some small bit to show agreement. She held out her hand, a way to formalize it here between them, and he grasped it; a firm shake sealed it and that were enough. Seemed best way to deal with issues that came up between them, as they meted out rules and roles about this odd partnership they’d started.

“Now, wasn’t it you what said we had a train to catch?” she asked. Brought them back around to the purpose of their being awake and out here, smoothed them over the rough patch that’d come up as they walked. Arthur smiled some to that, the fire dampened again under the shroud of his health, and he nodded.

They went started up again and, after watching him cough and heave them few moments before, Sadie angled her steps to come up beside him, took his arm the same as they’d been doing earlier. Nothing said as she done it, only let some of her weight rest on him each time her left foot went down; all the same, it gave him something to lean on too and she left it happen some. Bits of times when he near stumbled or the like, when he could give in some degree to her and not struggle with it. Neither of them spoke to it, only looked ahead to the Emerald Station that waited for them.

-

Weren’t much from there to book passage to Valentine. There’d be a train within an hour and not much beyond that, so she purchased the fare while Arthur found a place to sit down and wait. There were some folk involved in a poker game set up down the far end of the station, but all their eyes were on the chips and cards; seemed none of them cared for the two that’d arrived and that suited him fine. All he wanted to encounter were the sorts of nobodies that caused no trouble and stirred no pots; they’d enough with the stagecoach encounter and fortune’d do them both a kindness to keep that in mind.

Sadie came back and sat next to him, leaning back on the bench seats with a huff of air. “Second class,” she said, wincing as the quick drop to the seat pushed hurt through her side. They had nothing much to ease that, the liquor left in the barn as a sort of thanks to Seamus for what he done, but he recalled the feel still, the press of her weight every other step as they walked. It hurt her more than she were admitting, but she’d not take well to talking on it, so he forced himself to relax some, take in what she’d said about the fare class.

“Seeing as I usually crawl up through cargo, it’s a step up,” he ruminated, a casual chuckle rumbling through him. Rare were the times he’d even purchased a ticket before robbing a train; safer from the law to ride up outside the station limits and jump aboard, and if it were a payroll run, cargo was where the safe typically sat anyway. Them opportunities when they liberated the funds and fancies of the passengers were generally that: Opportunities. Taken by moving up the train from the rear cars, not sitting calm amidst them all from the get-go.

“Don’t you dare,” she told him quick. “This here train’s for personal, not business.”

Arthur chuckled again and leaned forward, braced his arms on his knees while he glanced her way and saw that sharp look of hers warning that this had better be for the sake of a laugh. “I doubt I’ll be taking much in the way of them business trips here on out,” he said. “It’s a young man’s game. Might as well be retired now.” Rueful, almost, or a blend of regret with that unknown that stretched out before him; knowing he had to get his health back? That he could figure some sort of plans on. Figuring what’d happen after that? Made his head and his heart both hurt, because it’d be a life he’d no familiarity with if he weren’t running, gunning, and robbing to make ends meet.

More they talked and the longer they waited, the more the hurt in his head increased; Arthur didn’t raise it, done his best to ignore it, but it kept at him. The blurred fog had started up at the edge of his vision, sign that the burning fever left behind in Van Horn’d come to catch up, but he kept quiet on it. They’d be on the train soon and he could rest up then, or so he told himself when the bout of coughing came to pile atop it. He let it run its course, not that he’d much to do otherwise, and ended up spitting aside a mess of blood-flecked phlegm. He could feel the rush of blood that came with the wheezing, the choking, and he pushed himself straight, then back to lean up next to her with an annoyed sigh.

“Your cough’s worse today,” she said, concerned. Kept her voice quiet, between them both, with this truth to keep from raising a fuss; he’d noticed the cough too, from the moment it woke him hours before. “You got any more of that stuff Charles brought?”

“Some,” he replied, not quite wanting to say what she deserved to hear. That it didn’t do half as much to fortify him as the day prior, like as not due to the lack of resting and real sleep. Hay bales and sleeping rough were familiar, but they weren’t good for him right then and he’d come to know that. “Took it this morning, got one more for tomorrow.”

Sadie frowned, worry traced quick and clear on her face. She reached over, touching the back of her hand to his cheek. “Shit,” she muttered, confirming as much as he’d figured. “I thought we was past this fever.” She looked around, like some solution might manifest, but it were green plains and dusty roads that looked back at them both.

Tired from dealing with it and drained by hearing it confirmed, Arthur took her hand in his and lowered it. “Ain’t going to help either of us to get worked up on it,” he said, slow and even. “Train’ll get here soon. We take it, get to Valentine, and then we got weeks for me to rest.” He gave her hand a squeeze, quick and reassuring. “Only, promise you ain’t about to leave this old man behind like he done tried to do to you already.”

“You’re not old,” she threw at him, but didn’t fight his grasp. Sadie held to him instead, like she might will some of her strength into him and ease the worst of it.

“Feels it, lately,” he said. Another damn bout of coughing hooked sharp claws in him, claiming its penalties for the exertion taken. That walk from the ranch to here’d been more than he’d done in two days, and with all else that’d happened, it drew a cost heavier than he liked. Arthur released her hand, thumping his fist down on his chest to beat it down. Always telling himself to breathe; that were all he had to do, though it were all but impossible when it felt like his chest were splitting open.

“Here.” Sadie pulled at the saddlebags from where he’d laid them down, dug out that small bottle of laudanum she’d refused earlier. This she held, grabbing his wrist with her other hand and pressing the bottle into his palm. Morpheus’s fool friend, it was, and he tried to shake his head; shrug it off like he’d no need for it, but she refused to relent. “Arthur,” she said, firm in tone and grip. “You got to _make_ it to Valentine first.”

“You ought have it,” he said, voice raw from the roughness of each choking cough. “That wound of yours’ll be rough on the tracks.”

Sadie shook her head, refused to let up; she’d made her decision on this being the plan and he’d that sense she’d not see his reasons no matter how he protested them. “I’ll get by a few hours more,” she stated, confident and immovable on this point. “But you? If you don’t stop coughing, I’ll end up dragging a corpse.”

All that tightness coiled up again in his lungs, triggered another fit what told him clear that she had it right. Laudanum’d serve to kill the cough where the tonics started to fail; he hated the haze that it pulled over him, and that she’d be left the full burden of keeping safe the both of them, but she were right. Don’t let pride kill him; that’d been advice taken and given, remembered here, but he kept falling to these habits what let that pride take hold and he’d no reason but instinct for it. Wheezing through the worst of it, them motes of dusty nothings threatening to darken his vision again, he gave in the point. Managed to nod to her as he turned the bottle in his hand to get it open. He fumbled with it, near dropped it; her hand moved fast to catch it and she lay her fingers over his, adding strength to his grip.

Opened, finally, Arthur raised it up and drank of it; drained the bottle and ignored the bitter, rusted taste of it. He stayed full aware of her hand still on his, guiding him to make sure the last few drops weren’t spilled in waste. He didn’t shake that away, though, even once the bottle had emptied and he dropped his hand. Hers stayed with his, briefly reassuring, then she pulled the bottle free, set it aside. “Feels like I’m half a corpse already,” he said hoarsely. “This damn sickness keeps adding years each damn day that I see the end of.” The rate it went, he’d be dust in the wind if that bore any truth.

Sadie smacked his shoulder, a hard touch after her gentler talk and actions. “You don’t mean half of what you say right now,” she told him clear out. “Fever’s back, makes you talk crazy.”

He cast her a look what struggled between amused, doubtful, and annoyed – at himself mostly. “Maybe.”

“Just you rest, ‘old’ fool,” she told him. “I’ll make sure you wake up for the train. I done ain’t leaving you behind, Arthur. You’re worth too much.” The five thousand dollar bounty were her reasoning, he figured, and who’d blame anyone for it? It were a good safety to fall back on if all else failed, as it sure seemed wont to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early update this week to offset the late one of two updates ago! Also, I plan to be streaming some Red Dead Redemption 2 this afternoon and know that if I start that, it'll be near impossible to focus on anything else for a spell and then I'd be late. 
> 
> Happy to announce I have a bookstand for the notebook now! No more leaning it precariously on my Master Sword letter opener and then cursing when it falls over. This week marks the 1/3 point of the first notebook in terms of typing it up. Down to about 20 blank pages in the second notebook in terms of writing it, picked up two more blank ones because WHY THE HECK NOT. 
> 
> Work's got me starting a project tomorrow that'll keep me busy, but I'll be able to keep at my evening transcriptions to the word document and allow me to catch up on the still laaaaaaarge number of pages behind I am in typing.
> 
> Take care all!  
> \- Kichi (Twitter @ [KichiWhy](https://twitter.com/KichiWhy))


	14. Chapter VIII: Emerald Station - 07: Marriage of Lies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The train arrives and Arthur requires a reminder that they are here to catch it, not rob it. Discussions turn to the dilemma of how to appear married in the eyes of others.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

Arthur fell asleep in the hour they had before the train came due in, much as he seemed to do anytime he had to slow down, go more than a few minutes without moving; all those years spent on the run, it trained the body to take what rest it could when the opportunity arose. Helped plenty here as the laudanum claimed him easy in the absence of much food or drink, soothing his breathing to let him recover some, as she’d hoped it might. Sadie left him to the sleep; did her best to not mind that his weight against her side grew heavier the deeper he sunk into the slumber. He needed it more than ever and it let her hear clear the way his cough supressed to a mild wheeze over the hacking, the choking. After a time and when she felt sure he’d not be disturbed by it, she tested the back of her hand against his forehead again. Relief came quick when she felt the heat of the fever as subsided again.

Damn, but that had given her a scare; threw to the forefront them anxieties she’d left back in Van Horn of him dying and her powerless to stop it. There’d be a time when he wouldn’t scare her like that, she told herself in an assurance she repeated more oft than she felt it. Once they got to Valentine and secured some place for more than a few hours and a hasty meal, they’d be able to stop a spell. He’d be able to mend – real mend, not recover just enough to make it through the next stretch of running. They might be able to take a step forward without all these tumbles back that kept cropping up. Frustrated her to wits end to see how quick a bit of action took everything from him, stole back every little bit healed, it made her want to beat fate, fever, or the almighty with her own fists to gain him ground.

Sadie knew also her thoughts kept slipping down those deadly what-if trails, meddlesome at best and dangerous at worst. These spirals and circles that they ran in were pervasive, a reality she’d learned of herself this last year. Only way out of them dark patterns was to keep moving forward; she told herself that every damn day so that she’d not slow, never come to full stop. Put thoughts to the task of surviving, not miring in melancholy or things that were done already. Or dead. Her legacy’d be to take action, and sure she’d figure on the consequences later, but never could she let it haul her down to where the spiral could find her.

Valentine. She put her thoughts to that instead of the fears. She were familiar some with the auctions there, riding down to the town twice a year to buy or sell what little stock she and Jake raised them three years up in Ambarino. Small enough town that drew in big money twice a year, and enough that it warranted a sheriff what could dispense immediately with justice, a train station to haul in and away the folks and cargos associated with livestock, and commercial stables to supply ranchers aplenty with horses. There’d be plenty of private security around this time, plus additional deputies strolling the streets, but for all that raised the risk of him being seen, it also quieted the ones of outlaws pulling too foolhardy of jobs. And she’d be able to find work, piecemeal mostly and only for a couple weeks, but it’d keep them from drawing only on their forced recompense from the Cartwright job.

First, though, she’d need to get a doctor on Arthur and see what could be done, then maybe pay him to stitch her side back together. Sooner she had it mended, sooner she could take on the heaver work to keep strong, sharp, and make better dollars for it. The thousand plus from their shared monies would cover off his care, get them both some fresh equipment to supplement what they clear didn’t have no more. He’d lost everything at the Hollow and she were down to the clothes on her back – jacket of which weren’t even hers, noted with a rueful cant. Worn, but warm too; smelled a bit too much like Arthur though, him and his clothes needing a wash as bad as she herself did right then.

Then, the auctions’d be over by the end of the month and the folk what flocked to Valentine quick to depart, to get back to their homes before the winter’s freeze set in. Couldn’t overwinter in the town without raising suspicions on what they could afford, raising temptations to see what could be robbed of them by some indecent fools what’d die for the attempt. And then they’d be forced on the run and the rough again, because she’d not let the money go easy and like as not, one of them’d be wanted for murdering the thief for the audacity of trying it.

Move on west to Strawberry could be it; plenty of trappers and lines were out that way, but not a lot of new faces could be seen in them crowds. Hard to pass as that sort in a pinch, harder to persuade one to give up his line and cabin to a couple strangers with guns that were all too ready to use them. Too much regularity, too many questions’d be asked when the trapper never came into town to spend his pelts, when they never hauled more than a pittance in to maintain the façade.

Then where? Hell, this is why she were wont to take the short action and not mull the long-term ideas. She muttered some curses to herself, thinking too far ahead right then and making it to complicated. Pushed herself to stop thinking that far, to stop boxing them in to ideas what had no surety; they’d have time to make the call later. They’d make the time, and if she had to force it then? So be it.

Sadie leaned back and let herself rest up against Arthur some in return for his pushing against her like a sleepy sack of potatoes. The weight and warmth of him reminded her that this weren’t her rodeo alone, not no more, and gave her a calming sense. Being folded into Dutch’s extended outlaw family’d done much to give her protection and all, but it hadn’t done much to soothe her over the months. Hard to stop and piece together more than the drive to kill Colm O’Driscoll while staying alive, even as law and feuding factions did their best to end all of them more than once. Separated from all that desperate surviving now, she supposed she’d have to try to figure herself out some. But for the now, she took that calm and let it slow her heart from the racing it done all too much since May.

There were some scattered few that made their way to the station platform over the course of the hour, clustered here and there as they stepped down from carriages, dismounted from horses and bade farewell to friends. Emerald Ranch had tried to style itself a destination in its past, a designation that didn’t take; it warranted a train station of meagre means, and little else. That gave it little traffic and few arrivals to worry on and second guess the motivations of. It allowed her to drift some, watching folk now and again, but mostly listening to make sure Arthur kept breathing slow and steady against her.

The precursor of the train’s arrival came with a sharp whistle, the cloud of smoke chugging up from the stack of the locomotive that approached. Sadie let it pull up without fuss, figuring it safer to watch passengers disembark first. It’d let her gain a feel for what sorts of folk they might encounter on board and with plenty of time left before they were expected to be secured in their car.

Sadie stayed still then, watching as the train slowed to its stop alongside the station and as passengers disgorged themselves, folks of all stripes and sorts milling and leaving in short order. None of them paid much notice to either of them and that suited her fine. Anonymity were their friend and a good friendship to have in their boots. She waited some small bit longer, let others start to board, before she decided it time for them to start moving.

“Arthur,” she said, shrugging her shoulder to jar him awake. He’d slid down as time passed; head come to rest there like her shoulders could play as some sort of pillow. He didn’t respond to jostling, so she brought up her hand and shook his arm that time. “Arthur, train’s here.”

That penetrated the fog of sleep, rousing him blearily; he lifted his head from her shoulder with only vague recognition, raised his hand and grasped about at his neck, finding no purchase. She realized it for what it was: Old habit to don the bandana to mask his identity as the train pulled up, hiding his face for the robbery. She moved quick to grab his hand and draw it down, holding it still to prevent that habit from a second attempt. Groggy, his eyes came open full and he looked at her with some confoundment, piecing things slowly as he caught up with the here and now. “Sorry,” he muttered, once he realized where he was, who she was, and how he’d all but fallen against her while he slept. The apology seemed a blend for that last bit and the confused readiness of a born outlaw that came with the waking.

“Don’t,” she warn. People were about and she aimed to be careful for all that none of them seemed to care. Mindful of the façade, their thin layer of protection from his being made as Arthur Morgan: murderer, robber, and all what came with it. “Mr. Adler,” she added, to remind him as she let go of him, “I believe our train has arrived.”

Arthur rubbed at his eyes with his other hand, tuning in to the low degree of bustle about them. The laudanum’d obviously gripped him, for his movements were slower and made deliberate, like he needed to make sure he were on the right track in making them. That he were actually making them and not just thinking to it. “’Course,” he said, nodding. He gathered up what thoughts’d decided to come awake with him and stood up, unstable and wavering some, but with the sense to lend her his hand like a good husband might.

This she took with her right, using all her strength to pull herself up without straining her side. “Thank you, husband,” she said with the sort of private smile she’d shared plenty with Jake, one upon a time, a small habit she could draw on without hurting. She folded her arm against his, helping to keep him focused and steady; bit too intimate for the two of them and she figured any rosiness on her face from it ought be seen as the vibrant life of a happy wife or some such sweet drivel.

“’Course,” he repeated, shaking off the sleep. He grabbed the saddlebags what’d dropped to the ground some point during his nap and they started to cross the platform. It felt ridiculous, her life not as familiar with the easy cons that he’d often played, but with her injury, it was easier to lean on him and so what that it enhanced the intimate romance of their pose. And the more she thought on it, the more ‘rosiness’ came up in her face, ears warming as she put her thoughts to walking, less on talking, and even less on thinking how it weren’t bad, walking arm-in-arm with Arthur, after all they’d done.

Sadie stepped up on the train first with a quick clearing of her throat, releasing his hand and turning aside from the offer of help his arm remained extended to give. She turned, gesturing for him to hand the saddlebags over so that he needn’t fuss with them. Credit went to the fact he did hand them over, but immediately took them on once again once he boarded. She shot him an annoyed look and he, still lagged by sleep and drugged by laudanum, only gave a quick, half-smile drawn in smug lines on his face. With a shake of her head, she led them into the second-class car. It had a spaciousness to it, seats staggered and lined with thin plush fabrics. They settled in best they could, with her taking to it with a degree of comfort – she’d ridden this kind of style before and after sleeping on cold ground, upholstered seats were to be enjoyed. Arthur, in contrast, weren’t at ease as he sat next to her; he kept glancing around with suspicious eyes. He’d not watched the folk gather ahead of time, hadn’t the sense of mundanity from them that she’d gained. Likely or not, it’d be all thoughts on how it were all too easy to hop onto a train, rob it, and be gone by the next stop, she figured. It’d be hard to let go that instinct.

-

Felt like they was sitting ducks, when he drilled down to it; all his control, his ability to assess what might be going on around them and change their strategy on the fly were gone as the train pulled away from the station. Muddled by the drugs only worsened the sensation, keeping Arthur on edge despite the steady, rhythmic sway of the passenger car trying to lull him back to sleep. He kept moving his gaze about, checking the entry points for trouble, measuring the postures of them folk around them for tension, and the folk themselves for nervous tells. Only good part of these concerns was that let him ignore the gurgle in his chest for a bit, as he pushed himself back in his seat and swallowed it down to keep watch on their safety.

Ripe targets, trains; he knew all too well the temptation they plied with their set schedules, predictable cargo, and immutable routes. Didn’t ease him to know it beat riding or wagons in his state, but he gained solace, he supposed, in knowing it made Sadie’s travel easier with that side of hers. Safer that way, but still worse the other; couldn’t win full with the stakes this high, so he’d have to sit.

And watch.

And wait.

Sadie kicked at his foot not ten minutes later, as he again scanned over those he could see without letting on he was watching them. He felt the absence of his hat, sudden and stark, as he tried to find some way to keep an eye on things without looking like an eagle searching for the field mouse. Could’ve tilted it over his head, cast shadows to hide where his eyes were looking, but John had it now and he’d not thought to steal one of the plenty left in the massacre they’d pulled not a day prior. 

“Stop fussing,” she hissed. “You’ll stand out.”

“Sorry if this all seems familiar,” he growled in an aside to her, breaking his lookout to glance at her, but he weren’t apologetic about it for all the words suggested. “Habits die hard.”

“Fools that cling to them die faster,” she muttered. He rolled his eyes to this exasperation of hers, knowing it better still to be wary; she smacked his arm, but mindful of the passengers aboard, she made the action a mock playful sort to the casual onlooker. He knew her irate beneath that though; there were too much force behind the hit to be a teasing.

“This ain’t going to be easy,” he said, voice kept low for her ears alone. He leaned closer to her, their heads bent together like they was talking to inane, private topics. Which, being fair, they were for their sort of issues. “I been running jobs like this since... Hell, since before I knew Dutch and Hosea. My old man,” and may he burn in hell, “weren’t the sort to earn his take by walking the legal side of things.” Used to drag Arthur into it since he was old enough to walk. Most of it were petty larceny, to teach his kid the family business. When he’d done well, then he’d not get beat; when he done poorly, then the belt were the gentlest sort correction the bastard used. Lyle Morgan’d done plenty of drinking and whoring in his time, but robbery were what he done most of all and he meant for that career to run in the family. Bitter in retrospect, but damn true.

“Try, Arthur,” she pressed, laying her hand on his arm. Sadie had a smile he weren’t familiar with, almost gentle or understanding, when she looked at him; made him feel even more out of sorts, face heating some as he looked away, like he ain’t earned the right to see this side of her. He figured that must be the sort of look a wife might give her husband, part of their play. And what the hell did he know about having a wife? Mary’d not wanted him for more than what he’d been: time and fun spent free of her family’s stifling influence and a way to defy it. Eliza’d been an aside turned formal; he’d felt responsible for what he’d brought into the world with her, like he ought to support her and the boy, but never real committed. Married folk had more intimacy about them, whereas his familiarity came with the natural business of sex; ain’t even much delved into that since before Blackwater, time and place never coinciding for it to be a pastime to take on.

“What’s you expected? I don’t got the first idea about how to make this work,” he said, quiet and nearer a harsh whisper, the anger of it directed at himself. If it’d been a few minutes needed to pass muster, sure. He could do that. What they’d decided on here meant days and weeks of playing a role he’d no ideas for. The fact he’d admitted it, like it were shameful he’d agreed to the ploy with no real idea on how it worked, were bad enough. “How’s you think a husband supposed to act?”

Sadie’s laugh, honest and abrupt in her surprise, threw him off; she covered the shock with a lighter, playful slap on his arm. “Like he’s in love, you fool,” she replied, downright amused that this lack of confidence even were a thing. “Tell your wife – that’s me – that she looks pretty. Complain to the bartender that she don’t like you drinking, I suppose.” She trailed off in thought, shrugged up a shoulder, and the lightness of her voice, the confidence of her posture, started to fade. “Like you’re with the person what you want to live your life with, in sickness and health.” She let out a quick huff of a breath, run dry on what else to say. “How am I supposed to know? I only got my three years and we was busy setting up the ranch. Too busy to do much of the married thing.”

There was where she broke off and he could swear the air chilled about her, face clouding over with that hurt recollection of why she only had three years knowledge. Talking like this made her think of her actual husband, rest in peace, and suddenly it were clear how much of a dick he’d been in saying what he done said to a wife made a widow that spring.

“I-“ He weren’t sure, really, how to go about patching that and that were clear in how little he had readied to say. He let out a breath, shook his head. “Shit, Sadie, I’m sorry.” Seemed ‘sorry’ were all he could ever really say about it, about so much he’d done or seen around the destruction of her life, and it never felt enough. “I don’t aim to make it bring that up, you know I don’t.”

There came over her a distant look, a sadness she tried to chase off with a minute shake of her head. “Leave off it,” she replied, half harsh and half absent as she looked away to the window. “Sleep some, if you can. We can-“ A sad, soft, and bitter laugh she turned inward, gone to the kind of place he frequented, where no one were meant to reach her, to make her feel nothing she didn’t want to feel. He’d have no luck mending it while she were there and he cursed himself for being the one what sent her. “We’ll talk about how it’s done later.”

-

Sadie turned her attention from Arthur, watching as the Heartlands passed by the window as the train went along. Loss hit her, unexpected, and always when she least wanted it to. Teasing Arthur over not knowing the best way to play dutiful husband’d been innocent enough, and then she took it too far, reached back too deep and dredged up everything she’d spent months trying to supress. Working together, building things up; talking about how to divvy the work, what to do once things were in order, when they might turn to them other responsibilities of marriage. She found it hardest to think of these happier, mundane times that were lost. Gone. Things that used to give her peace now left a hole inside her and Sadie could feel the stinging prelude of tears biting at her eyes; she kept her gaze resolutely looking out and spoke no more of it.

Arthur sighed, no doubt angry at himself for what he’d done to turn her thoughts inwards, but he stopped trying to offer those helpless apologies, them stilted platitudes that done neither of them any good. Instead, he tried to settle in his seat, give her some sort of solace by trying to rest like she’d asked. There were some mutterings to himself, curses she’d wager if she’d caught the details of them and she’d not be surprised. What startled her, though, came when he reached over and put his hand over hers, a gentle and comforting pressure of sorts that did more to soothe the hurt than any of the words he’d tried before.

Compounded, this surprise, came at herself, when she twisted her wrist and met his hand palm-to palm, fingers interlaced with his. Kept her eyes on the outlook, but let herself feel the roughness of his callouses, the thin irregularities from dozens of scars and burns earned over the years, started to learn them with an interest she’d never much entertained. It were an odd sort of connection she found she needed right then. He didn’t fight it neither, just gave her hand a quick squeeze, confirmation that he had her as he sunk back down into sleep.

They stayed like that a while, hand-in-hand, and she idly let her thumb move alongside his like she might pet a cat in her lap. Sadie caught an older lady smiling at the two of them with that contented ‘young love’ assessment or some such romantic nonsense. She took it to be that their façade held at first glance, despite Arthur’s concerns and her failed assurances. Mostly, she kept her eye on the passing scenery as she ignored the pain in her side and pushed away what’d rose in her heart, and turned down them worrying concerns about what’d come next that’d started to poke at her thoughts.

Train pulled in at the oilfields station without fanfare and no folk disembarked, no workers lined up to head out there it seemed. She watched some variety of others, small in number, come aboard as they’d gone and finished work or appointments here and were bound home to Valentine. She listened to the distant holler of workers moving cargo on and off the freight cars further down the line.

Took her a second, but she noticed one of the newcomers staring curiously her way a moment and three beyond proper. When she challenged his gaze full on, all he did was tip his hat to her, murmur one of those societal niceties called greetings, and moved past to sit down at a set of seats near to the rear of the car. Wary, Sadie made a show of checking on her sleeping husband, the false fussing on him letting her cast sidelong glances back that way and what showed his attention back on her. Or on Arthur. Were that familiarity sparked in his eyes? Couldn’t be certain and looking much closer’d alert him if he were not up to good things. She could see, at least, no bandana ready to pull up and mask his face, but that weren’t promise that he didn’t have unprofessional interests in this here train.

First thought were the robbery, and just their luck after the stagecoach; still, two’d be a smarter number, if this were a planned job, and she was the only one he’d made eye contact with that she caught (and she weren’t about to rob a train, sir). One or two others what boarded at the same time bore themselves distinctly different and indifferent to those around them, but not pointedly ignoring him like an ally might. She figured the lot unaffiliated with one another, narrowing him down to a one-man problem.

Some thirty minutes out from the station, with the train moving at speed, Sadie decided it was time to test whether the man’s attention had been intentional or not. Now and again she’d risked a glance back his way and each time his interest felt unchanged.

Leaning in close to Arthur, she nudged at his leg; startled him some, his grip on her hand tightening fast as he were roused again from rest he dire needed. Though, it seemed he couldn’t have it the further along they travelled. Soon, she promised herself; she’d get him safe and secured and then he could sleep for days all he wanted. “We’ve a friend what come on at the last station,” she said, voice quiet and meant for only his ears. “Real interested in you or me ever since. I aim to figure out which of us he’s after.”

Arthur heard her, processed the words with a furrow in his brow. “How’s that?” he asked, husk of sleep shedding easier this time. The laudanum could be wearing off some, a worry to worry at later if it started to complicate his breathing again.

“I head outside the back of the car for a cigarette.” Sadie had some left of the opened and crumpled pack taken from Buell’s saddlebags back in Van Horn, and figured he had some matches in one of the pockets of his coat; it’d serve a good a cover as any. “He follows? He’s after me. He don’t, I come back, you head out the front car, much the same.”

It were clear he didn’t like her playing bait first, especially if this nobody had designs on her; folk could be real depraved about what they thought available for the taking, no matter if the target wanted it taken or not. Only he knew to respect – or fear – her survival instinct and the skills she’d developed to serve it, maybe even pity the fool that tested her on it. “Okay,” he agreed, reluctance clear in his tone. “But I’ll keep an eye here. He goes after you, or I catch any sign of trouble, and I’m there.”

“Same, dear,” she said, louder this time. She leaned close, pressed a kiss to his cheek as a loving wife would, and done her best to not flush at the idea, then extricated her hand from his grasp as she stood. Immediate came the sense of missing the warmth of that contact, the comfort she’d found in that connection, but she pushed it down and stepped to the aisle. Paid no mind to them others that she passed, even their person of interest, as she walked towards the rear of the car. She paused at the door, giving a glance back to Arthur before she took a breath and stepped out to the buffeting wind between the cars, sliding it closed behind her.


	15. Chapter VIII: Emerald Station - 08: Bait Taken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trouble's gone and found them once more, this time in less an ignominious fashion; still, Arthur's got to deal with the annoying shadows of what he's done, whether he likes it or not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

Arthur waited where she’d left him and kept his senses alert for any movement, any change in the air of the car what might say the bait’d been taken. The spot where she’d touched her lips felt odd, something of a tingle that he ignored best he could as he waited, with his head tilted down like he were napping still. That let him use the angle some to glance back between the seats. No one stood or followed Sadie out the rear, no danger rising immediate to the surface. Built first that sense of relief that the intial threat’d been dismissed, followed by the annoyance. Anger. Dread, some, that it were him this fella was interested in by the way she’d laid out his focus on them. Still lay a chance it could be an old-fashioned train robbery, but he’d lived long enough to be wise to chance and luck both being stacked against him.

Problem weren’t expecting the trouble, but more how he felt sluggish, chest tired and blood laced thick with laudanum. Things going south could turn bad; he’d no guarantee or sense he could do more than foul up a fight if it came to that and damn did that make his fist coil into a tight grip. Sadie’d more fire stoked in her compared to his barely banked coals, but that wound of hers could be trouble up close. One punch to her side could reopen it, make worse what they’d just managed to patch at the ranch. He ran a hand over his face, dragging it heavy to get a sense of feeling back, of focus. He scratched at the side of his neck, sly to check over his shoulder; there was a head turned to where Sadie’d gone, a moment where it could have been her they was after, then the fellow turned forward and looked his way. Dressed for riding, with a low-drawn hat and heavy duster set on his shoulders; none of it the same age, like as not replaced piecemeal as monies came in and patches wore out. What weren’t, though, were his gun belt and, he’d measure, his sidearm; that all looked clean and new, the mark of someone that lived by their guns. Gunslinger, bounty hunter, or plain outlaw; all three could be a problem, especially if they knew him for Arthur Morgan over the Mr. Adler identity.

“Hell,” he muttered, making a point to yawn, seem even groggier than he felt to keep from raising alarm that anything were suspect. Arthur thought to how he’d deal with it once buddy there laid out his cards, likely come for him. At this point, he assumed he were the target; for Sadie to have noticed and made the call to wake him were merit enough to make it a safe assumption.

Footsteps came casual down the aisle and then a hand rested on his shoulder. He tensed, but it were only Sadie, back from her bait run and breath carrying the tinge of cigarette smoke. She sat down again, mindful of her injury, and looked at him from the corner of her eye. “Didn’t bite,” she said, though it were clear enough to them both. “Give it a few minutes, then you.”

Arthur nodded, tried to stretch without making a show of it. There were a stitch in his back from the coughing, and all this time spent idle made him stiff. His thoughts were on how to deal with a problem if it made manifest without making a mess of things. Or making a worse mess of things than it already all was. No answers were at hand, even some minutes later when Sadie’s hand on his brow broke him out of the planning reverie.

The expression she had stopped him, the sudden uncertainty painted there a warning of things going wrong. “What?” he prompted.

“That damn fever,” she said quietly, followed by a curse of a stronger sort that ladies real weren’t supposed to know. She paused in thought a moment, then shook her head. “Forget bait,” she decided. “There ain’t proof he’s here for either of us. We call it being paranoid, deal with it if he follows us through Valentine.”

“That’s a fool’s plan,” he replied. “We do that, we risk raising hell when all’s we want is to slip in unnoticed.” There came a stinging in his chest and, in struggling to clear his throat, he started coughing and she withdrew her hand, moving it to his back until it subsided. Arthur gripped the seat arm, steadied himself with a breath that stuck with him that time, and stood. He glared down at her, daring maybe that she stop him, but she only narrowed her eyes, worry shifted into anger. Stubborn. Good, it’d protect her some, keep her from doubts as he ran the bait ploy.

Arthur left her like that, moving up the car as he brushed his hair back from his face, still missing the damn basic idea of having a hat, his gone with Marston and not replaced. Too damn long his hair’d gotten, nearer his shoulders than it’d been in years; usually kept it shorter, but it were one more damn thing that went to the wayside. Air wheezed in and out of him as he walked and he ignored it, but to take a deeper bracing breath before he stepped out into the heady wind that dragged between the cars. Fresh and crisp, it near set him coughing, though he swallowed that back with effort.

Quick instead, he stepped aside and pushed himself back against the wall of the car he’d just left; kept his profile small as he could manage, hid there with his head tilted down. Weren’t easy, lacking all them lanky limbs like Marston what tucked in neater than a starched shirt; for all he called that him brother, it were Charles that he matched better in build, broad as a bull and twice as thick-headed per one Hosea Matthews.

Them thoughts weren’t right for the moment and he dismissed them; instead, Arthur waited. Countryside passed pleasant enough as they went, rocks scattering the landscape less and less as they drew further from Citadel Rock. All sights he’d seen plenty before, though their familiarity bode odd comfort. Pragmatically, the rocks and boulders scattered here and about lay too near the tracks, made it dangerous for an outlaw to ride up next to the train and hop aboard to cause them trouble, the chance greater that they’d lose their horse to a broken leg over a successful leap. Gave him that confirmation, some, that this weren’t a planned job that’d been waiting in the wings.

Tucked back and shoulders drawn in to conceal his frame – muscle tone sapped from tuberculosis at least lessened the bulk of him – Arthur kept waiting until the telltale sound of the latch came faint in the buffeting air. The fellow he’d spied in the car, same one Sadie’d made as their problem horse, stepped out and slid the door shut, figuring maybe that his quarry’d moved to the car ahead. Like he were classy enough for first, with them plush chairs and fine liquors; hard to supress the laugh at that idea when comfort, to him, were sleeping on a cot under the open skies.

Arthur left him that delusion until the door closed, taking assurance in that no second came nipped at his heels. It were when he was satisfied it’d be one-on-one that he moved, grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed forward hard. Took them both over the narrow gap between the cars with a stumbled step and a startled curse. He kept on the momentum to spin him, push him hard against the wall of the front car and pinned him there with an arm against his chest. He drew his knife and pressed it meaningfully at his side.

“Heard you was giving my wife too much attention,” he growled, playing to the ruse first. He had to make sure this weren’t coincidence like the stagecoach.

Nothing of surprise, not even a flicker of doubt rose to what he said, as Arthur found himself looking at cold, calculating eyes similar to his own and them that he’d known. The sort that prided itself less on being judge, but sometimes took on executioner if the pay came right. Profiteer of the west, a job he’d done before. Weren’t matter, the labels, but for the one called bounty hunter affixed to the one glaring at him with cold confidence.

“Arthur Morgan,” the man drawled. No sudden movements and no crying insecurities came despite the sharp knife cutting slow through his jacket. “I got me a paper what say’s you’d best give up the ploy and come quiet. I get paid whether you come dead or alive, but it’s a mighty fine bonus for alive.”

Christ. It were the same sort of tired speech he’d given plenty and he half-choked on the laugh before he figured, why the hell not? He let it sound, rough and amused, at the irony wrought here, trailing into a chuckle, a shake of his head. All the while, he steadily pushed the point of his knife through the leather and cloth the man wore, drawing that first prick of blood to lend credence to the threat he posed. “Let’s just say you got me confused for someone else, _friend_ ,” he said, emphasis on the term as he dug the knife deeper. “And we can both go about our own ways.”

The blood and pain made it real enough to send a layman screaming, but this one here had experience by the unfaltering stare returned to his. Made him a real hunter, not some kid on Ike Skelding’s payroll that were hired to overwhelm with numbers, not skill; also made it the situation where he’d not likely scare him off with a few threats and a new hole poked in him. His sort got shot at all the time, bore scars plenty from knives and plenty of farmyard implements; one more blade pressed at his stomach weren’t some fancy new tactic, but old hand. He’d like as not have to force a more permanent solution to clear the air.

“Look, Morgan. I got bills to pay and you’re the bounty to pay ‘em.” Logical and impersonal, this consummate professional here came off all congenial, like it were no fault of his that Arthur bore a heavy bounty. Truth was, it weren’t, sure; didn’t mean he had to come quiet. “Deny all you like, but so-called wife of yours? Bet she could be made to confirm you’s Morgan through and through. And I got no qualms with convincing her.” The smile came too close to predatory for comfort there and he scowled fiercely like it’d smother that smug bastard.

Ploy to get him off guard and that’s it, Arthur told himself, eyes narrowed; the blade sunk in another quarter inch, piercing the soft, sensitive skin beneath and promising worse. “Clearly you don’t know her then,” he growled. No amount of convincing could make Sadie talk if she don’t want to, he were sure on that.

Still, the threat to her safety made it easier to figure this guy’d be better dead than hounding him, so he made for the kill. The grip he had on the knife slipped some as he went to twist it, palms sweating from the sick and the fever; ain’t ever put his gloves back on after last night, still bothered by the memory of her biting hard into them, screaming long and loud, and that turned out a foul on him. Distracted brief as he were by that gave his ‘friend’ the window he’d been waiting for, a fist driving against his gut to push him back, then aside to knock the wrist of his knife hand hard. Reflex failed and he lost his grip, cursed as the knife fell from the side of the train, out of sight; only satisfaction he got from it were seeing the spread of blood what came from the slice in the bugger’s side.

Arthur stumbled back and swore a new streak, near lost his balance and his foot between the cars; he grabbed at the thin railing off the steps what would disembark them at the station. There he struggled to stop himself, crashed his side hard into the brass-plated iron right next to his hands. He tried to straighten up quick, but his lungs were screaming mad at the impact. Coughing broke out fierce and he leaned heavy on the railing, feeling each jarring twitch of the track shudder through him, making it worse, dislodging bits of phlegm to choke him worse.

This gave his pursuer that second of pause to assess, a light dawning on him that maybe this weren’t the difficult job he’d been told to expect. Arthur Morgan had a reputation as a ruthless son of a bitch what never lost a fight, part of what made him so profitable on paper, but this showing of himself weren’t up to snuff. Undeterred, or suspicious that it were an act, he pressed the advantage and drove a fist hard into his side, sharp pain driving already sparse air from his lungs. “Let it happen, Morgan,” were the suggestion as he cracked his knuckles, laying hard into his side and back with two more hits.

Arthur kept one hand on that railing, a lifeline to hold tightly to, as he doubled over, falling to a knee. Couldn’t see shit from stars, specks and motes spread thick across his vision as oxygen depleted him. That familiar crushing weight, like being trampled, made him unable to breathe. Almost dropped to his other knee, saved that indignity by another instead. Felt as his collar were grabbed, and he was hauled up back to his feet; caught something in his peripheral, about the only thing he could get vision of. Rope, coiled and looped; guess the plan was alive, to make good on that bonus.

Fella pushed him hard and he hit the wall of the car, still coughing when the force of it drove more air from him, made it damn well worse. Time was narrowing for him to act; knew he had to do something, anger built up the longer it went, the less he could breathe. Arthur gave in on that struggle, even brief, to make do with his lungs had, to go past losing the battle. Focus shifted from the effort of drawing air in and out, the wheezing pushed aside, and let him narrow his sense to feel when his wrist were grabbed, an elbow pinned hard in his back to keep him from pushing away. Bastard thought to tie him, thought it an easy task. He flexed his fingers, felt the first loop slide over them; instinct told him this were the point, to move, and he damn well did.

Drove his foot back, blind, and found the fella’s leg, connected solid and shifted his balance, made it possible to shove back off the wall with his untouched hand. Knocked them both back, Arthur pulled with him by the grip on his wrist and he left off fighting it. Stumbled some, but used that inertia to shove hard once more, keeping them both off balance long as possible. Followed up with a fist, torso twisted to make the weak connection, but it proved beyond a doubt he’d intent to fight. He’d have to earn the bounty, damn it!

‘Course, it took its toll, all this fighting; lungs screamed and ripped at him until he had to relent. He gasped for air and staggered, tripped back over the gap they’d just crossed. Landed flat on his back on the other car, winded, with his vision blurry. He shook his head, heard the cussing of the man. Arthur lay there a second and five longer, getting his breath back and lining his senses to where they belonged again. Heard the shuffle and the stumble, the hop across as the bounty hunter followed up on his falling.

“Dead or alive,” the man was saying, bending down to grab his booted foot instead. Start there, where he’d not be able to punch him half as effectively. Though the aggravation of it came clear in his tone, like he were considering whether he’d go with the first option of dead to save on effort.

“Shut up,” he wheezed, kicking out with that leg. A satisfying crack on the jaw came clear, dazed the fella and sent him stumbling. Gave Arthur a grim smile of sorts as he pushed himself upright, hauling his legs close, feet beneath him. The rope’d dropped and he grabbed it, looped it loose between his hands. He heaved a breath, just barely managed to hold his balance; looked at him flat on his ass and cursing, rubbing his jaw where he’d left a muddied boot print. “Last chance to walk,” he warned. “No one the wiser that you lost to a sick man.”

Credit him his persistence; this professional of sorts shook his head, an action what cleared it of them stars and stripes, and glared. Gone were the mug of a cat what got the cream, here came the countenance of the drunk who found piss in his whiskey. Had him reassessing the threat as real, worth every penny the posters promised. He reached slow for his holstered gun, looked like a sawed-off shotgun from Arthur’s angle. The kind of gun that Charles favoured, a quick thought; weren’t for warning shots, that type being a one-and-done deal. “You’re coming with me, Morgan,” he said, determination writ clear.

There were that sense of time run slow, world narrowed to them two. Fella went for his gun, Arthur ran the two, three steps at him. Caught his hand, slipped the loop of the rope over it and pushed his shoulder hard to turn him; pulled tight on the rope, dragged the arm across his chest, up by his neck, biting tight into the skin. Forced him up against the rail, held him there with his weight, wrenching the free arm back to pin it, lock it with his elbow.

Arthur pulled hard on the roping, getting himself a length enough to wrap a loop around the man’s throat; he held it tight, chest heaving from the effort of this whole mess. He leaned there, pinning him, for some few minutes as he caught up on breathing, coughing, spitting, and then finally felt like he could talk proper. He affected something of a nonchalant air, or tried.

“Now, me? I ain’t got no trouble with you,” he wheezed. Habit had him check the man’s pockets as he spoke, lightening them to burden his own. Some coin, cigarettes, a folded piece of paper he shook out to see the too familiar sketch likeness of himself, looking real fierce compared to how he currently felt more days than not. Issued out of Blackwater, this one said his value’d come up good, sitting at a comfortable six thousand dollars. A low whistle, that same sarcastic thought of whether he’d be fair to collect on turning himself in.

“But,” he added, clumsily and one-handed folding it up again; he tapped the fellow on the head with the corner of it, “seems you think,” he continued, twisting the hold on his arm to three shades of hurting, “I should. Me, though? Been minding my own business, I have; ain’t done nothing wrong in two, three days I reckon. Sure, shot a couple folk yesterday, but they was trying to rob me, y’see? Killed a bunch of Pinkertons last week, I suppose, but today? I was being sin-free as an angel and you come up, ruining it.”

He tucked the poster into a pocket, listening a moment to the choked struggles as the rope dug deeper and deeper into his neck. Oh, how he know that pain of breathing, mind that his airways were blocked from inside rather than out. No. Weren’t quite the same, so he pulled the rope tighter, to near choking. There, that were close to how it felt for him on the day-to-day and it brought him a strange sense of satisfaction to share that experience with another, it truly did.

There came a gurgling, a gasp; pretty sure he heard something about how this guy was choking or couldn’t breathe or something unimportant like that. Pretty sure, though, that was the point to what he were doing. Still, were it right to deny him this chance at discourse?

Sure was.

Arthur’d not’ve been given the same, before the tables got turned, so he weren’t feeling gratuitous or gracious or however the fancy folk called it. His gut hurt where he’d been punched, his side where he’d hit the railing, his face from when it’d been slammed to the wall; seemed all good reasons to not give this fellow the avenue of parlay.

“Now, I know’s your type,” he said, widening his stance, stabilizing it before anything stupid got tried. “Cut a deal now to save your hide, come back for the profit later.” He scratched at his cheek, thoughtful. Almost. “Maybe you’re thinking that you tell some of your professional buddies where you done seen me last, hoping that I’d cull some of your rivals before they cut me down. Tempt ‘em by offering a cut of the bounty.” Arthur shook his head, regretful, and wound the end of the rope once about his knuckles.

“I got a better deal,” he offered, slackened the rope enough to give air, some space to speak. “You tell me how it is you found me, then maybe I’ll decide to keep on minding my own business. Forget this little mistaken identity thing happened.”

The hand caught up tight in the rope twitched, indicated that maybe his way of doing things could be taken on here. Coarse and rasping was the voice that spoke up. “I weren’t out for you,” croaked out, maybe wheezed; couldn’t really tell, since he was wheezing pretty hard himself. “Picked it up in Blackwater months ago. Got lucky, taking the train; got a job down in Valentine.”

Goddamnit, luck again. All them times he called Marston the golden boy because the luck ran good for him sure did offset it against Arthur in the form of bad. First the stagecoach, now this asshole; what the hell else wanted to go sideways on them? Best not think on it, no need to tempt fate.

Arthur tightened up on the rope again, caught at the crossroads of a moral dilemma. He’d suggested, intimated real strong, that talking would loosen the impromptu noose. Leveraged it for information, but hell if he didn’t like the idea of a loose string. McIntosh he’d bought off, truth hidden in them threats, with the extra thousand from the lockbox, but a thousand against six for bringing him in? Ain’t even a drop in the water, wouldn’t work to silence his type.

Still, he’d only said he might forget this happened. Never swore no blood oath that he’d be free to go, no harm done. And he’d been truthful, in knowing the bounty hunter type, and their methodologies to come back with greater numbers. “Appreciate the honesty,” he said with a pat on the back. Consolation prize of sorts, he reckoned. “Turns out, my memory’s pretty good,” he added, quieter. “Forgetting this? I don’t care for the risk it’ll bring, and me?” He leaned forward, to speak clear in his ear. “I don’t need no reward to be fine with killing you.”

There were a part of him what took satisfaction in moments like this, when he hauled back hard on the rope and crushed a man’s windpipe. Held tight to it as he bucked and struggled, kicking some, but he’d too much experience here. Steady, wide stance kept him from budging. These were the moments he meant when he said he was a bad person; felt no remorse or guilt as he choked the literal life out of this, what? Stranger what only wanted to do right by the law and profit along the way. It were an honest sort of living, but it went against the surviving that Arthur’d promised he’d try. Charles and Sadie wrung that promise out of him and if keeping it meant killing this fellow what probably had family out there somewhere that’d miss him? Then he’d kill him.

Never took long for a man to die when he couldn’t breathe. Arthur Morgan, lauded by some as a blockheaded sort, had been one of the few to screw that up on himself, in retrospect. But this fellow died easy enough and all too soon he was unwinding the rope from a corpse’s neck.

There came a scrape of noise as the train car door slid open to let one person through before the mirrored scrape of it being shut. “I left you alone for five minutes,” were Sadie’s sarcastic words, arms crossed as she looked over the mess – literal and figurative – left behind. She leaned up on the door, blocking out the glass pane to keep folk from second class from seeing much of anything.

“Five minutes’ all I ever need,” he replied, heaving the body up so he could kick it off the train. Dispassionate as he did it, watched it crumple and roll to a stop on the ground, left behind quick and efficient. The rope he kept, looping it up with a mutter of it being good material. He looked at her, coming down off that sharp high of the fight, starting to feel unsteady on his feet. “The jackass lucked out,” he said by means of explaining it. “Wrong time, wrong train; he aimed to drag me to Blackwater.”

Sadie shook her head, held out her hand for the loop of rope. “Shit luck,” she muttered. “Thought we’d be due for something better by now.”

Arthur laughed to that, stepped careful back over to the second-class car, grabbed at the railing now that his hands were free. “Hosea always said bad things come in threes,” were his unhelpful contribution, leaning up against the wall next to where she stood. He could feel the cool breeze, the sweat on his brow, and he wiped at it with annoyance. “Stage is one, bounty hunter’s two.”

“Don’t,” she said, straightening up. “Don’t you curse us by asking what three’ll be.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we come to another two chapters, y'all. There's a winter storm warning out here and I got distracted replaying the Colter chapter, thus I'm 2.5 hours off my preferred schedule (sorry!).
> 
> I wanted to thank everyone that's read this far, or come back and read the updates as they come; I never expected to get the number of comments or kudos that have graced this work and it means the world to me. Special shout-out to my repeat offenders, Lemur and Denicer, because I do so adore the interactions we've had.
> 
> Good news! I have identified the "end point" for A Sinful Mercy and it should happen somewhere in notebook #3 (which is about ~250k+ words away from where we are now). Bad news? LOL, j/k... Great news! There'll be a sequel story to it, once I get there. I have some one-shots that I may also toss up some time. Most of my writing focus goes into keeping ASM on track though, so no promises on extra content just yet.
> 
> Love y'all! Doing some tweaking to tags and summary tonight, so don't mind me. And maybe fixing words and grammar, whoops.
> 
> \- Kichi @[KichiWhy](https://twitter.com/KichiWhy) (Twitter)


	16. Chapter IX: Valentine - 01: Doctors Orders

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They made Valentine without being robbed and that's some small fortune after a rush of bad luck. Enter, stage left, a doctor without much fond recollection of Arthur Morgan, but enough love for money to not poison him just yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

Sadie weren’t bothered by any corpse no more, and this one struck her as even less an issue than most. Once she saw the feller get up and follow Arthur out the front, she’d figured it would be the outcome. The efficiency of the kill, cold and calculated, was what threw her; after seeing him sick and hurting some weeks now, fevered and broke these past few days? It had distanced her mind’s association with the hardened outlaw who’d earned no small measure of the van der Lindes’ notoriety for being brutal in all them right and wrong circumstances. Her own killings came most from anger, her rage sending her screaming to find the first, fast, and most painful way of killing them what stood against her. Arthur, though, he’d perfected the art of murder and found a logic that supported it. Should’ve bothered her, she supposed, but it never had; his dispassionate skill’d seen too many O’Driscolls dead for her to do more than favour it, learn to take comfort in how he could be a good person and still a right bastard when the occasion required it.

“Five minutes for all this was almost too long,” she returned flatly, looking him over. Sweat shone bright on his face, his skin pale but for the ruddy flush of exertion. He leaned there, almost relaxed and bearing hise strength like the Arthur of old, but then the train hit a twist in the tracks and he stumbled, leaned more against her than the train, muttered a quick apology for near stepping on her foot in the motion.

“Hell,” were his cursing, his weight sagging some against her shoulder. Sadie straightened up, so’s she could pull his arm over that shoulder. The movement stretched her side some and she winced, but bore it all the same. Stepped them both off the wall and turned so they could head back in. The fact he tolerated the shoulder to rest on said as much that he needed the help as the staggering’d done.

“It’s where you’re headed,” she muttered, pushing the door aside on its tracks; helped him through, resting a hand on his stomach to keep him from swaying forward. “Come on, Mr. Adler,” she said, voice enough to carry through the car, comport their return together as the dutiful couple.

Arthur snorted, an amusement of sort pulling at him – at the name, maybe, or what he’d just done out there. Made her suspect that the altercation’d gone and driven his fever higher, gone and muddled his thinking again. “Maybe,” he agreed, stumbling along. She bit her lip when that tugged at her side, kept quiet to focus on the heavier problem of Arthur first. “Trying not to,” he added a moment later; gained a sense of himself, how each stumble nipped bits of pain at her, and took more care with each step.

All that care and partial apology didn’t stop Sadie from near dropping him into the seat again, letting him figure himself out as she took the spot next to him. Hesitant to trigger his stubborn refusals of care, but she were determined to check his fever with the back of her hand. Damn good thing, too, because his skin felt hot to the touch. She frowned and he waved off her hand weakly.

“I overdone it,” he admitted, closing his eyes. The gravelled ache of the admission came through his voice, strained and absent any strength. A deep breath taken didn’t seem to do much, but he tried his best by it. “Bastard hit pretty hard.”

There was fresh red about his eye, early indicator of bruising to replace the murky purple ones what’d started to fade from the Hollow, and it’d be black by morning. One more complication added to the landslide, mounting on her frustration with how she couldn’t damn near stop it all from going south no matter what they tried. “Arthur,” she started, only she didn’t know what more to say. There built a pressure in her head, beating at her to get out, but the words weren’t there to take them through talking it out, the making sense of why it bothered her to her core to see him like this.

Arthur’d settled into the seat, exhaling slow. Spent. “We get to Valentine,” he said. “Then I won’t go nowhere least a week. Swear it.” He’d started dropping words, leaving gaps of meaning in his statements, but didn’t seemed bothered by it, nor to have noticed it. He pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket, blindly holding it out for her, with a cocky, tired grin. She took it, unfolded it to see the wanted posted what’d set the hunter on him in the first place, harvested from him too she wagered. “All else goes shit, you got better retirement now.” This came with a deprecating laugh. “More ‘an last I ‘eard.”

Sadie folded it back up, tucked the poster into the pocket of his jacket that still hung loose on her frame. “Damn fool,” she told him. “That ain’t funny.” Then, because she couldn’t figure how could any one enforcer get that high a price on his head: “Why’s Blackwater so set on getting you in?”

Barely noticeable, the shake of his head and his head fell back against the seat. “S’where our luck turned sour,” he muttered, the most open statement she’d yet heard from him on the fouled job that drove them up the mountain. Her mountain. “Dutch killed a girl. Weren’t like him, but I s’pose weren’t much left of him even then.” The words were come further apart, disjointed, as he drifted. “Lost it all, but they never got it back.” Bits of smug in his tone, even here, that he’d deprived, what? The rightful owners of their goods, maybe.

“It?” Sadie never much asked about the gang’s jobs, and them unspoken rules said that the only folk allowed to talk about Blackwater were the ones that’d been there. This moment, just them talking and all that locked firm in the past, she took the chance on understanding more of what’d started the storm that drew her up in it.

An annoyed snort and a shake of his head. “The damn money,” he rumbled. “Twice that. Easy.” The bounty on the poster, she supposed, by the vague gesture he made towards the front of the train. “Guess they want make an example.” A faint laugh. “S’all gone anyway. Hid. Somewhere back there, ain’t know where exact.”

His voice’d gone faint, tired; like he were falling asleep and a glance his way proved it true. Eyes were heavy lidded, fighting to keep open as the sway of the train took him. Sadie left off talking then, knowing that there was only a short stretch until the train pulled in at Valentine. Better to let him recover some of what he’d expended and by the fact it took him not even a minute more to be sleeping, he needed it. Sadie watched him for a time, breathing steady and shallow, but restless, then let herself drift without full sleeping, watching the folk about them, mindful for sudden movements or other tells. It pulled her away from the frustrations that bound them both, the sense of hopelessness that kept trying to draw heavy over her.

When the train did pull up to Valentine, it did so in a quiet, simple, and unassuming manner; the shudder of the car coming full stop shook Sadie out of her reverie. Arthur kept on sleeping, even when she stood slow and careful to not jostle him, headed up the car to speak with a conductor, ask for help getting her sick husband to the nearest hotel. There were some hands at the station, she was assured, that’d be happy to help for a few dollars.

Sadie went back and took on the saddlebags first, letting them hang over her shoulder before she crouched down and gently shook his knee. This time it woke him first try and he looked at her, seeing and recognizing the familiar, before he gained traction on what was going on about them. “There’re some folk that’ll help us get to the hotel,” she said, hand still on his leg. She saw the cloud what crossed his features, the parts of him that struggled to accept this, but there were larger parts of them both that struggled to move at all and that won out.

“This’ll be the only time,” he muttered. Threat or promise, it were hard to make out; she patted his knee as she stood, held out a hand to help him up. He took it, more to steady himself than full pull, and they both made their way off the train with limping steps.

It were an ignoble sight, them walking through Valentine with her leading, Arthur helped along by a bright-eyed young man with a fresh five-dollar bill tucked in his pocket. It was a trek to the hotel and she were grateful for the help, careful to curb all them sardonic replies she rustled up each time he tried to ma’am this or ma’am that at her. Another couple dollars spent assured his discretion and one last errand, to fetch the town’s doctor, late in the day though it were. Doctor Calloway would understand, the youth assured her with a vigour about him that she found exhausting right then; she just nodded and sent him along, taking Arthur’s arm over her shoulder to help him up them last steps into the hotel.

-

Valentine. Been a while since he’d come through this place, but Arthur could remember the hotel room that they finally secured after that damn embarrassing show of being walked through town like some weak old fool – hell, but he knew that’s what he were right then. Awful feeling anyhow, but he was done and spent, his chest burning with every breath, with each of them shallow no matter how deep he tried to haul the air in. Sadie handled the business of renting the room with no nonsense about her, but he saw the owner recognized him; clumsily, he raised his hand in a two-fingered salute of sort, knowing the fellow wanted money more than trouble and Arthur’d always come spending the former, tried to keep the latter out. Weren’t a concern of being ratted out to the sheriff, so long as they kept on paying however long they stayed. Got him a nod in return and Sadie the keys to the room; triggered the new challenge of getting them both up the stairs. That took time, but the managed with judicious use of walls and railings to help brace him when his balance went one way and his body aimed for the other.

The worn, dusty mattress and threadbare sheets of their room were right plush after everything and Arthur put his focus to sitting on the edge of the bed, staying as upright as he could while he pulled off his boots. Room had plenty of space about it and Sadie’d tossed the saddlebags down in the far corner, the canvas bedroll folded tight in one of its pouches; she’d like as not use that for sleeping, though weren’t right to make a woman take the floor when there were a fine bed (princely, compared to the ranch’s luxuries) available. She’d also like as not shoot him if he tried to switch their arrangements without her agreeing to it. Only a couple days like this, at most, is what he told himself, swaying back and forth a bit where he sat; they’d rent a room with two beds or something like and then society’s rules could be damned. Or upheld. Weren’t so easy to track no more and he just wanted to sleep.

“Doctor’ll be here soon.” Sadie was over by the door, taking a cautious look out before she closed it, leaned back against it. Her eyes shut a moment, taking stock of her thoughts and bolstering her fortitude. She took a breath, pushed off, and pulled off her hat to set on the back of a chair set near the wardrobe. Weren’t quite renewed, but braced instead to keep moving about over collapsing right there.

Arthur felt his sense of things slipping towards the darkness and shook his head, smacked the side of his face quick with a hand to wake him some (and earned a glare from her for it). “You know,” he said, unfastening his gun belt to set it on the nightstand, reluctant to part far from the one weapon he had left. Knife were gone, one of his revolvers lost days ago, and the only reason the Schofield he had left were in any shape were, he figured, because Sadie must’ve cleaned it sometime at the trading post. Damn but did he miss his satchel and saddle, both loaded with plenty to keep them safe and both lost in different ways. Hey, ain’t he been saying something? Yeah, he had. “There ain’t much a doctor can do for me,” he continued, finding the lost thread of conversation. “That one I saw what told me it were TB said about all’s I could do were rest.” He paused, laughing bitter at himself. “Couldn’t. Hell, two weeks on the mend after Colm’s, ah, sweetheart’s getaway and I were stir crazy from sitting in camp. Always something what needed to be done.”

Sadie was trying to pull off his jacket, wincing here and again when the weight of it shifted, twinged her side. “There ain’t anything to do now,” came her reply, fair in ways that reminded him there weren’t no camp, no twenty mouths to feed no more. Just him and her and she were having a hell of a time with the jacket.

“C’mere,” he said, standing unsteadily and beckoning her closer. “You twist too much, you’ll bleed again.”

Reluctance weren’t strong resistance after their travels, train and stage both, without quality rest. Sadie came over, her limping more pronounced the longer the day went on, and turned so he could be gentle to grab the collar, lift the heavy weight of the leather so she could slip her arms and shoulders free. “Appreciate it,” were her perfunctory thanks.

“M’pleasure, Mrs. Adler,” his reply, words still blurred some. He folded the jacket, laid it over the back of the chair next to her hat.

Sadie pointed him back towards the bed and he didn’t argue it, about ready to head back to the sleep interrupted by the train drawing in. All the while, she stepped herself up to the full-length mirror, dust smearing the edges of the cheap glass. Cautiously, she turned and lifted the edge of her shirt to check the damages. The rough dressing held, but blood’d continued to seep slow into it, widening the dark stain he’d seen that morning. Snail’s pace to it, at least, and they’d both be thankful for that.

“Seems doc’ll be better doing, patching you up,” he commented, dropping back down to the mattress. He nodded towards the injury, its reflection in the mirror.

“You ain’t a lost cause yet,” she told him. Almost an order it came across as, like she figured he wanted to keep fighting the whole point of healing – and after he’d promised to do better. Gingerly, she touched the bandage, fingers come away dry; bleeding been slow enough that it soaked through, but dried. Good. “Them doctor sorts always got some tonic or miracle cure crap what could help you do that resting thing. Thanks to them Cartwrights, don’t matter what the cost of it is.” Bit of silver lining came up there and distracted him brief.

Knock sounded at the door what startled them both; Arthur reached for his gun and nodded to her, meaning clear; he’d cover her if she checked it.

“Excuse me?” A man’s voice, uncertain and something irate. “I was told you folk needed a doctor?”

Their prey, of sorts, arriving didn’t help lower their guards; Sadie made sure to leave him a line of sight on the door as she opened it. “And you’s the doctor?”

Middling aged man of some means stood there, a dark medical bag in hand; Arthur remembered him faint, there had some sort of protection racket out run by Colm behind his surgery. Been real reluctant about it continuing, but about the same when Arthur shot it up and cleared out the bastards. Like most of the folk in this town, this gave him a bit of a questionable rapport with Arthur.

Doctor Calloway, that was his name, stiffened; affronted that he could be taken as anything but a doctor. “Of course I am!” he huffed, like it were some insult to be aught else.

“Don’t get all mad,” Sadie said, placating some as she beckoned him inside. “We’s had a rough couple days with strangers not being what we thought they were.” And a rough couple of months with friends that were not who they’d played at being. Couldn’t blame them each for being cautious.

Once he stepped in and looked over his way, the good doctor stopped and his expression lost the huff, replaced by a grave disproval. “I thought you’d been run out of town,” he said; rueful or regretful or some blend of both.

Arthur shrugged to it, gave over a half-cocked smile. “All them fine vistas and classy saloons around here. Couldn’t keep away,” said with an unapologetic cant to it.

Sadie closed the door behind the doctor, looked between the two of them with an unsurprised look about her. “Of course you’d know him,” she muttered, leaned back against the planking of the door again. She ain’t gone into Valentine when they was out at Horseshoe Overlook, but even the camp bodies knew he’d shot up or beat down half the town them few weeks they holed up nearby.

“Sure,” he said with half a chuckle, turned into one hell of a cough though what kept him from elaborating. That also made all too clear why it was that the doctor’d been called up late in the day, asked over all the way to the hotel like some kind of house call. He held up a hand, taking a minute to catch up on the breathing.

-

Sadie frowned at the renewed coughing, nodded towards Arthur as the doctor stood there, pretty darn sullen for a middle-aged man. “He’s been real sick,” she said, ignoring the tired look from Arthur. Beat him over the line on that, his mind like as not thinking to get her side looked at first; ladies first and that sort of drivel, but she were wound tight from the travel still. One poke or prod at her’d end up with a black eye given free of charge and she needed to calm some, make it so that she’d not lay flat their dear doctor before both of them had been treated.

“Doctor in Saint Denis said it were tuberculosis,” Arthur reported flatly, wiping away the spittle from his mouth. His breathing came heavy and hitched, never enough to fill his lungs no more.

Calloway set his bag on the nightstand, almost too near Arthur’s gun for his comfort, but only went to retrieve a stethoscope from his kit and hook it in at his ears. Pushed away the loose buttons at the top of Arthur’s shirt and union suit, placed the cold metal bell against his chest. Then he listened a while, giving a few orders for him to breathe in and out, what gave its own sorts of trouble in complying without no attitude thrown in, then left off it. Set the stethoscope back at his neck, peering next at his eyes one after the other. “And when was that?”

Arthur went thoughtful at that, seemed shocked when the truth of it dawned on him. “Couple months back, I guess,” he said with a shrug.

“You’ve been resting since?” The assumption made prodded at them both and she bit her lip to keep from retorting on his behalf as the doctor checked the pulse at his wrist, nodding slow to himself.

A laugh what degenerated into a cough and three more at its heels, wet and painful. “Naw, I ain’t got that kind of luxury,” came his blithe reply. That ironic lilt in his tone that said it weren’t the first time he’d been told to do as much as rest.

That soured their doctor friend, a frown creased deep on his face. “This is not about luxury, mister...?” He trailed off, like he’d never full heard his name before. Likely had, after the Cornwall mess that unfolded down main street, but seemed a tiny dose of kindness to lie, pretend ignorance in the face of what he’d hold as an arrogant son of a bitch.

“Adler,” she supplied from across the room, arms crossed and fighting her exhaustion. She itched to move, or eat, even sleep to chase it off right then, but after all they done went through to get to a doctor, she’d hold still until the rapture if it meant getting him some care. Weren’t wise to squander what they’d secured here.

“Mr. Adler,” he confirmed with a wry look her way, clear now that he knew it a lie in turn. “As I was saying, this is not about luxury,” he reiterated, tilting Arthur’s head back, fingers pressed in along the line of his chin as he palpated for something. She’d no idea what he was doing and left him to it, but there was a part of her ready to draw on him if he started any funny business. “This is about life. Tell me, how bad was the cough when you met with this doctor?”

“Pretty bad,” he admitted, pulling his head back, away from the fussing. Arthur scratched the back of his neck, shrugged up a shoulder. “Bloody as often as not.” He stopped a moment, figuring on the degree of truth to share and, with a glance her way, gave a resigned sigh. “Only reason I even saw that damn doctor was cause I-“ he stopped here with a grimace. “Hell. I was coughing so bad that fell off my damn horse. Some fella saw it, near dragged me in there.”

Sadie could’ve felt the anger spike, or could’ve been shocked in another life, but not here. This was Arthur Morgan talking and never a more stubborn sort had she met before. Half dead from Colm and riding in with a sceptic shoulder, his first words to the others were to say it’d been a trap, he got away and was done sure he’d not led them to camp. Always first seeing to others, not himself. So, surprised and angry? Not in ways that she showed, but her lips pressed to a thin line, not impressed by it neither.

“Then you are very fortunate, Mr. Adler.” Calloway delivered the reprimand with satisfaction rife in his tone, a turnabout for these two she figured that put him on the higher ground; she made a note to watch him, make sure he didn’t try to exploit this outlaw what’d made rough parts of his life. “To be alive still after being that ill is a miracle, but God does not give these lightly, nor to the same man twice.” He returned his stethoscope to the bag, taking out a syringe and a vial of some sort of liquid medical concoction he worked the cap on, pulling a dose up into the needle. “There is little that can be done but rest,” added, this time to the dutiful missus. “Seeing as he failed to follow the doctor’s orders before, I trust that you’ll see to it he doesn’t engage in anything more strenuous than a stroll?”

Sadie snorted some laughter, unladylike and amused at the idea of Arthur being made to do much of anything. Mind that if anyone were to succeed at it, she’d put good money on it being her. “My husband here’s a good man, doctor, but obedient is one thing he never learned.”

“I ain’t good,” came the growl from Arthur, one of them instinctive reactions he had any time someone suggested he had any shine to him under all them layers of tarnish he’d applied with care and intentional disregard towards them he don’t like.

The doctor gave a long-suffering sigh, checking the measurement drawn in. “It’ll be the difference between being wed and a widow, Mrs. Adler,” he pointed out.

What an irony there, for them in the know; she exchanged a quick look with Arthur, an eyebrow arched. “It’s an experience I’ve no mind to attempt,” she allowed. The ‘again’ addendum was tacked on in silence, with no need to be sharing more with some random fool. “I’ll do what I can, but he’s a stubborn oaf.”

“That’ll do.” He turned back to Arthur, rolled up his sleeve to palpate the inside of his arm, seeking out a vein. Paused a moment to lay down the syringe and retrieve a small bottle, a fold of cloth from his kit. The acrid smell of alcohol came from the bottle, poured into the fabric that was then used to wipe down where he intended the injection. Sadie didn’t look away as he done it, the long needle thicker than she’d have liked, but weren’t her arm it went into. “This should fortify your breathing and help regain some energy, but it’s no excuse for bedrest.” These orders were added firmly as he withdrew the needle, indicated Arthur to put pressure where it had pierced the skin. “Nor is it a cure.”

“There any?” she asked. “Cures, I mean.”

Doctor Calloway returned his implements to the bag, took a few seconds too long for the answer to be anything but bad. He closed the bag, picked it up, and turned to face her with a rather sombre expression. “No, ma’am,” he confirmed, hitting the honest note that she could’ve gone without. A lie, easy and smooth, would’ve been preferred, but she’d a sense deep down that Arthur would have long ago gone with a cure had there ever been one. “Tuberculosis is a progressive type of disease and does not respond much to modern medicine. Best thing to do is rest up, stay warm and dry, and keep him fed. It feeds on the body, you see, and it is critical that he outpace that. Lots of hearty food and rest, that’s all we can do now.”

“What’s the likelihood it’ll work?” she pressed. “If he does all that resting and eating.”

This had no easy answer by the pause, the slow draw of breath that preceded his response. “Half of those that develop the infection and follow such treatment are said to recover. Out here, I’ve seen it closer to a quarter.” He frowned and shook his head, straightening up to be the professional sort; his doctor’s personae. “That is with plenty of rest supplemented by tinctures that lessen the worst of the symptoms. Your husband, pardon my frankness, but... he’s in a bad way and must put his health first, without exceptions. Two months of being as ill as he has is difficult, at best, for the body to recover from.” A look shot to Arthur, a shadow of their history cropping up in the darkness of it. “Even one as pervasive and stubborn as his.”

“Say he does,” she forged ahead, needing to understand better what conditions impeded the road she had forced herself and Arthur down. “He’ll be better? That it?”

Calloway shook his head, his expression bearing a shade of regret when he looked back to her. They’d no rough history together, no reason for him to judge her harshly but for whom she associated with. “There will always exist the risk of a relapse,” he said. “And his fortitude will never regain the levels he had prior to this illness.”

“And _he_ don’t care,” Arthur cut it sharp, teeth ground together and hard to get the words past. All this talk of him, with him there to hear it, no doubt made him uncomfortable, at best. “I promised Mrs. Adler to give it my best. I ain’t nothing without my word, so that’s exact what I’ll do.”

“Then you’ll have your wife come by my office in the morning,” the doctor replied smartly. “I have treatments for the symptoms, ones that will ease the pain, and an extract that will help expel the detritus that the infection has built up in your lungs.”

Sadie nodded, an easy agreement in her books, and moved to the saddlebags, careful to extract a small fold of bills from their shared haul. This she held out to Calloway, who looked hungrily at the money, but refrained from grabbing it outright; it were more than a doctor’s visit ran, but she’d intent to it. “This’s to retain your services, doctor,” she said by way of explanation. “And since it seems you knew my husband before, a measure of your discretion. We of an understanding?”

The speed in which the money left her hand and disappeared into the confines of his bag spoke to his agreement; any societal niceties around the crudeness of pecuniary matters discussed with ladies were fully absent. “If that’s all?” he queried, the only bit of politeness he seemed to have left.

Arthur held up his hand to stall them both, and when she was ready to shoo him out. “That ain’t,” he said, pointing to her.

This earned him a glare from Sadie, who was ready and comfortable with waiting for a morning appointment to treat her side; mounting exhaustion turned out to dull the pain of it, make it less of a priority over sleep. She’d been ready to forego food until the doctor raised it as a point for Arthur to keep at; she supposed that reason to trudge out, get something for him at least before she turned in. But, no, Arthur had his other plans.

“Ma’am?” This query came out less confused than it ought; she supposed the dark stains of blood on her shirt weren’t quite the subtlety to ignore now that she were out of the jacket.

Sadie sighed, looked away from Arthur towards the doctor in a resigned fashion. “We was waylaid,” she said finally, holding off on crossing her arms and trying to chase him out for the night. “Couple of opportunists what got a lucky shot in.” She raised the hem of her shirt, gesturing to the bloody field dressing that’d begun to sag and fray.

“Bastards shot a strip off her,” Arthur growled, the anger rich in his tone as he thought on that fool of a failed robbery. “Did my best to clean it up, but I ain’t no medical sort. She needs it sewn up. Tonight.” Room for negotiation on the topic were absent in the words, both for her and the good doctor, which roused her some from the tired, riled her stubborn side awake and ready to fight.

Doctor Calloway could not decide which of them to respond to, glancing back and forth between faux husband and wife before he went with Arthur, the more familiar degenerate of the pair. “I will have a word with the owner,” he suggested, though clearly reluctant to be doing more this evening. “There is a room downstairs that I can use to inspect her injury and do what I can, but you must stay here to rest.” A pause of propriety as the reminder clued in that it wouldn’t be quite appropriate alone. “He keeps a few girls on hand; I am certain one can be persuaded to assist.” Not that Sadie needed no chaperone here; if the doctor had the tenacity to try anything, she’d cut off his testicles and sew them to his ears with a smile.

“I’ll come,” Arthur said, his voice holding steady where his posture were anything but. He tried to get to his feet, but she crossed the room and put a hand on his shoulder, holding him down.

“You ain’t going nowhere,” she snapped, channeling that stubborn streak he’d roused up. “Get your behind in that bed or I’ll shoot you and save the effort.” The was sharper words than she’d intended, but they was said and that’d be that.

He stared at her, seemed a mite off a full-blown glare, but the fact his eyes couldn’t quite focus on her through it said she’d win this argument the longer it went on. “Goddamn it, Sadie,” he growled. Seemed like now he’d decided to try living again, he suddenly took on full responsibility to make sure nothing about her life went sour neither and she weren’t having it.

“Doctor, I’ll see you downstairs,” she said, dismissing him without a glance back. He left quick, sensing a bit of matrimonial dysfunction about to commence. Once the door closed behind him, she let off her hand, crossed her arms. “It’ll be an hour, Arthur,” she said, frustration risen clear in her voice and expression. “Anything happens, it’s the same damn building. I’ll shout and you can stumble on over, shoot all them that bothered me. Fair?”

The deal lacked full fairness to him, that she could tell; he were angry about being left there, bothered by the concept he’d be as much a hinderance as a help. Ain’t nothing they could do about it until he were better though and that seemed to draw the clouds down on him, darkening his mood. He nodded, recalcitrant though it were, and she left him to it. Satisfied too, in that it evened the score on making sure she got patched up sooner over later as had been her intent.


	17. Chapter IX: Valentine - 02: A Stitch In Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Much to her dislike, it comes Sadie's turn to be patched up when all she wants is a full night's sleep. Turns out possible, after a generous dose of morphine and whiskey both. She does have to promise not to compromise the delicate virtue of Arthur Morgan afterwards though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.
> 
> CW: Reference to offscreen stillbirth (unnamed character).

The hotel’s owner rented her the bathing room for another dollar, which included the assistance of a young woman by the name of Brady to draw the hot, clean water and provide the doctor with anything else that he required. There were certain adherences to etiquette that she would help meet, being that Sadie’d like as not have to remove her shirt for the doctor to be able to conduct a proper assessment. Weren’t proper to be alone with any lady in such a state, after all; mind, Sadie didn’t much care either way. She’d only just made it down the stairs without help, limp significant as her side screamed at her for hours spent ignoring it. Whatever it took to get this sorted and free her for sleeping, she’d do it and no mind to it.

The girl, Brady, were of a kind enough type; young and pretty, the sort what done well helping lonely folk out during cool nights in their rooms. She insisted on retrieving a fresh skirt, shirt, and such nots for Sadie before they started, saying that she’d launder the soiled clothes for her, earning another dollar and some for her efforts. Once they were secured to the bathing room, she helped Sadie remove the remains of her shirt, then had her sit on a hardwood bench as she bustled close, the volume of her own skirts offering some small modesty back that weren’t her concern.

Doctor Calloway kept on being professional, the harshness of his disdain towards Arthur shed as he unwound the makeshift bandages; he proved his mettle as a doctor in how gentle and thorough he cleaned the wound. “There is a great deal of skin irritation,” he commented as he worked. “I’ve something that will lessen the swelling, but it’s often sign of infection.

Sadie had her hand on the bench’s edge, grip white through the knuckles as seeds of the pain that she’d forgotten about blossomed anew. She were aware of Brady trying to soothe her, humming a soft tune as she smoothed down her hair in a distant reflection of what Arthur himself had done. Made her flush, thinking back to that, to his arms holding her because her brash attitude of dealing with the injury contrasted to the care he’d taken in cleaning it. “Rinsed it with moonshine,” she said, biting back a curse as Calloway probed at the depth of the gash with his fingers.

“That...” A shocked silence, followed by the soft sigh of one too used to the complications of home remedies. “Mrs. Adler, did you cut it with water?”

That made her laugh, though she swallowed it quick. “Weren’t thinking real straight when I did it,” she said with a shake of her head.

“Then it is no wonder you walk with a limp,” were his cool assessment. “The alcohol in moonshine is often undiluted, and far more potent than whiskey. It should never be placed straight on an open wound. It aggravates the tissue fiercely. At least infection will not be a concern, strictly speaking.”

“I’ll be sure to avoid that in the future.”

A calm, if cool, hand came to rest on her back, a reassuring sort of gesture. “It’s best we stitch this closed,” the doctor suggested, retrieving his suture kit from the medical bag. “Then you’ve less risk of a scar that could complicate your future.”

Sadie weren’t sure she caught the meaning, for all she sat through and heard him speaking it. When he failed to elaborate, she spoke up. “What’s you mean by complication?”

Brady rested a hand on her shoulder, delicate to the touch and light, as though comforting; seems she understood well the doctor’s intent. “There was a girl here got cut up during a bar fight,” she explained softly. “She got better, but her stomach never healed right; wide open scar and all. Most of the time, it was a fine thing and she got plenty of sympathy for it, but, well.” The girl lagged here, fingers squeezing her shoulder quickly. “Couple times she were carrying went sour; her little boys must’ve not wanted to hurt their mama, because they both died a few months out from due.”

“Miss Brady.” The doctor handed something to the girl, a rustle of motion she caught in her peripheral. “For Mrs. Adler to drink before I begin,” he clarified, turned back to the preparations. “Now, I don’t doubt the story of Miss Brady’s friend; however, this wound of yours should heal fine. It _could_ make it difficult if you and your husband intend to grow your family, but it is not likely. I would advise retaining a doctor to discuss possible complications if you do.”

That draped an awkward, uncomfortable shade about the room. Sadie’d not thought about a child since before Jake were killed, busy living and ranching and thinking they had all their lives to do it, innocent to the reality of how short one of them lives’d be. Arthur was a marriage ruse and all, but the idea that if she found some new love, something worth it, that this could put trouble in her having a family struck a strange, hollow chord. She weren’t quite sure what to think on it and so she didn’t, instead pushed it aside to be a problem later.

“Ma’am?” Brady had a bottle of whiskey, freshly opened, nudged against her fingers where they held tight to the bench.

Sadie took it with a nod and braced herself for the fiery burn as she drained a few mouthfuls, then a few more before the girl took it hastily back. “Do your worst, doctor,” she challenged him, hands back to the bench, gripped tight. She felt a bit hollow, like she couldn’t quite process thoughts right, but that made it easier to sit through the sutures being placed, muscle and skin tugged back into a semblance of order without her making a sound.

-

Whiskey rooted strong in her, stitches pulled tight through her side, and morphine shot thick in her arm to ease the pain gave Sadie something of a light sensation, the heavy thoughts and discussion from before it started drifting off. She kept sense enough to hear that he (the doctor) wanted to see her specifically in a few days to check on her side, and that he’d have some tinctures and teas ready for her husband in the morning. Part of her said that’d be no use, since he was long dead, yet she didn’t say it quite clear; right, there was Arthur, the new Mr. Adler. This recollection she held to, knowing it somewhat important even as very little else ranked the same in her haze.

Once Doctor Calloway packed up and left, Brady helped her clean up the rest of her, even combed out her hair and gave it a thorough washing to dispense of travel’s mud and mess. Seemed a shame to otherwise waste the hot water, so Sadie let it happen, sitting and swaying some as the alcohol and morphine took away the pains of her past few days. She said something of amusement at some point, Brady laughing and chiding her playfully that her husband’d be right jealous of he’d heard that and she had to hold tight again to the idea that, right. Weren’t Jake they were talking about. Were Arthur, upstairs and sour, but alive and-

Hard to keep sense of herself and bless that Brady had good intentions, helping her dress in the clothes on borrow. Or purchase. Whatever it was, the skirt was soft and clean, same as the rest of it, and she took comfort some there. She’d buy something of a better fit in the morning, sure as sunrise; and something for Arthur too. Trousers, for the both of them, though he’d look finely angry if she showed up with a dress for him and the idea made her laugh.

Then, with her hair damp and combed out, the rest of her mostly together, she made her way back up to the rented room without help, though she had the idea that maybe she’d forgotten to order food or something. Climbing one stair after the next took too much focus for her to keep that thought and she shed it somewhere on the landing. Sadie fumbled some with the lock on the room before she got the door open, met by a cautious, questioning look and a quickly holstered gun over Arthur’s way.

“I’m fine,” she told him, sitting hard on the sole chair in the room once the door’d been closed and locked anew. She stretched back her shoulders, hardly feeling the minute tug of the stitches, and started to settle in to overnight it right there. Arthur ain’t done much in her absence, aside from use the wash basin to clean up some, and she was pretty sure he’d managed that without moving from where he sat on the edge of the bed. Maybe he had? It was on the other side of the room, so he must’ve, but, sure. That turned out fine for her, with the less he strained himself, the better. Or more he cleaned himself? Hm. Hard to decipher which she meant.

“What are you doing over there?” he asked, gesturing to her posture as she slowly extended a leg to brace herself from sliding off the chair.

Whiskey and morphine doing their divine dance in her veins made it hard to care, so she waved him away with some vague annoyance. “What’s it look like?” she asked. “Get some sleep. I’m fine here.”

“The hell you are.” There was a surge of anger in his voice as Arthur dragged himself to his feet, pointed harsh to the bed; seemed he were conveying something, but she just stared it him, not giving ground. “You need solid rest as much as I do. Mattress’s big enough for two.” He moved over, deliberate steps taken, and grabbed her elbow to haul her to her feet. “Come on.”

Sadie tried to argue the point, but her tongue were thick in her mouth and her feet, damn them, they just agreed to standing when he tugged on her arm. She thought she argued some as they walked over the far side of the bed, but he just shook his head and wouldn’t hear none of it. Which ended up how she found herself sat on the edge of the bed, Arthur kneeling down in front of her to pull off her boots after awkwardly asking her to hike up the skirt hem just enough so he could see, face looking red and oddly sweet in the speaking of it. “I’m fine,” she insisted as he held up the blanket, indicated she best lay down beneath it. With all the hard seats and cold ground of late, the worn mattress felt incredible to lay back on no matter her protest in doing it. She were sure she hadn’t meant to lie down though, rebellious body relenting without her.

Arthur pulled the blanket up over her, made sure she weren’t about to fall out or nothing, then moved around the other side of the bed. When he went to lay down, he were careful to stay above the covers and his body were tense, almost rigid as he done it. It were awkward and she felt the blurry concern that this’d not be a good night’s rest for him, but she couldn’t keep hold of that slippery thought, only that he were being a right gentleman here after all them times denying it of himself.

“You trying to protect my virtue, Mr. Morgan?” she asked with a smile. Her hand moved to rest on the fresh bandage over her side, holding it there as she felt her own tension melt away. Most of her focus too, making it hard to slur out: “Such a gentleman.”

There were a faint sound, almost a chuckle, as he shifted to his side, kept his back to her. “Pretty little thing like me’s what I’m protecting,” he muttered. Teasing. What a strange relief to hear after the coughing, the hurt, the frustration, the everything. “Who knows what a wild woman like you’d do to me.”

Sadie laughed freely, an unfamiliar feeling. Amusement came easy, mostly bitter and cold, but this was a momentary joy, unburdened. “You’ve no fear, sir,” she assured him, all fancy before a yawn cut through her speech. Then another, as sleep descended over her; she’d the sense to make one final statement before slumber. “I shall,” she continued, the words lagging further apart, “do my best not to ravage you.”

-

Morning were slow in coming, the proximity of the lady and his cough keeping the spectre of sleep at bay for some time. Every time that it woke him, chest tight, Arthur moved quick to turn aside, smother the noise of it best he could. Seemed his concern – to allow Sadie sleep unfettered – weren’t so hard-founded though. Each time he settled his breathing, a bleary check on her showed her own breathing slow and even, more colour coming back to her face with each passing hour. Whatever the doctor done to her, aside from making her half drunk with morphine, had mended some parts of her.

Good.

Eventually it were, but Arthur did drift down and stay asleep, with his back to her, arms crossed over his chest, legs crossed about the ankle to keep his profile narrow, to hold off from disturbing her. All her accusations that he’d run himself to the grave could be turned easy to her, all she done stripping away her healthy vigour. Earned the rest and recovery, that she had, and he’d a mind to protect it much as he could. Protect her as much as she’d done him of late, he realized as he dozed off.

When he awoke with a start, Arthur found himself flat on his back in the middle of the bed with the blanket half stretched over him – the parts what weren’t pinned underneath him, at least – and no sign of Sadie. Sunlight made some teasing appearances through the windows, telling the tale of late morning or early afternoon being the hour. He rubbed at his eyes, making no sense of it in his sleep-addled fog. Chest burned still, but that were all it done of late, and he forced his breathing to a slow and steady tenor as he pieced together what was going on. Pushed down that paranoid habit of thinking an absence of anyone could mean trouble – in particular when Sadie were concerned, because she’d be like as not to cause the trouble in place of suffering it.

They was in Valentine, he reminded himself; the two of them laying low while he recovered, with just that one bounty hunter what recognized him on the train. And that’d been dealt with the best way he knew how, grim and damned efficient.

Arthur pushed himself slow to sitting, twisted so that his legs hung off the bed; didn’t feel the same dizzying vertigo he had in Van Horn, a small measure to fortify the idea that he might do better, might mend some with rest. He leaned forward with only a bit of trouble, found and pulled on his boots without fumbling them poorly; might be he were feeling better after right rest, a thing he’d not gotten much of since... hell. Since he were ordered to stay put while convalescing from what Colm’s boys done.

When he straightened up, he noticed a tin plate set on the nightstand, with a folded note next to it. Plate held eggs, a spread of beans, some salted pork, and a chunk of dry bread. Note were short, from Sadie, and saying she’d gone to get some supplies; there were a line there asking he give her through late afternoon before assuming she’d gone and gotten in a fuss. The postscript stated she meant that to keep him from shooting up the other half the town looking for her, her wit sharp and clear when she wrote it.

His brow furrowed, looking over the letters scratched on the page; he’d seen her writing before, from darling Cousin Caroline writing to Uncle Tacitus before fleeing from Shady Belle, but then it’d been a flowery bit of diction and she’d matched her penmanship to it. This here was a rough cursive, short and to the point – like her temper, he supposed. The few errors she’d made were scratched out with hard, short lines that spoke to how quick she worked to fix things, and it all felt a perfect match to her personality. He allowed the roll of an amused chuckle as he folded up the note, tucked it in his shirt pocket for later; it’d be the kind of keepsake he’d slide between the pages of his journal, if he still had one, but for now the pocket’d serve.

The food he took up, familiar and flavourful, and it went down easy enough, though it were more than he’d the appetite for. Calloway said he needed to add weight by eating more than the sickness claimed and he did his best to it, but the extra mouthfuls felt heavy, overdone. He eventually set the plate aside, bread all but untouched, and figured on trying to eat that last bit later.

Arthur braced himself to stand, moved about some to clean up, done his best to make it through the basic ablutions a man ought maintain when in society, so much as Valentine counted for that. Took up all the strength he’d regained overnight and he found himself sat back on the bed before long, wheezing through shallow breaths, with his back rested up against the headboard. There he stayed most of the afternoon, dozing in and out; so long that he’d been on the go, on the run, that he’d a rough time justifying the hours held still and silent. Longed for pencil and paper to at least keep him occupied, but couldn’t even find trace of what Sadie’d made use of for her note. Fingers clutching reflexively, seeking something to do, ended up rested in his lap; his mind called him to be on alert, but his body otherwise embraced the stagnation. This and old habits of snatching sleep when it came up made it hard to stay awake more than a few minutes at a stretch. Even the coughing, left without the constant irritation of exertion, dispelled some as sleep claimed him each time his lungs went calm.

Were the sound of the door’s handle being twisted that lured him awake again, an eye opening to make sure it were Sadie and not some unknown party that he’d have to shoot, hand half reached for his gun, lifelong instincts strong. It were her, though, cleaned up and looking brighter than she had for days. The skirt and blouse of the night before were gone just as quick, trousers the sensible replacement she favoured, a work shirt, and a leather vest completing it. She’d even acquired herself a new coat, a heavy black duster that’d serve well as the season went cooler. Her eyes, he noticed, had lost some of them shadows what had chased them since he first woke in Van Horn, and that gave an strong measure of relief he ain’t expected.

“Mr. Adler,” she greeted, stepping inside. Her booted foot shoved the door closed, her hands occupied with some small mess of parcels, a new satchel about her shoulder looking plump with supplies.

Arthur coughed, then managed to clear his throat without much worse going on. “Mrs. Adler,” came his greeting in turn. He moved to get up, come help her, but she shot him a fiery look and a shake of her head that said his life could well be at risk if he defied her on it.

“There’s a room to let,” she said, dropping the parcels and whatnot on the foot of the bed, “over above the general store. Board has breakfast, two baths each a week. I paid a month up front.” Briskly said, the immediate business meant to be dealt with as was her wont.

“Ain’t you the model of efficient,” he drawled, teasing to the tone, but truth to the words.

Sadie laughed, knowing something he sure didn’t by the sharp cant of it. “You ain’t seen the room yet,” she warned him. “All them places with extra beds are getting snapped up quick; I took the first one I got. Fall auctions start in a couple of days and there’re plenty of hands come early to line up work.” She’d moved to sort through the parcels, including one larger box of sorts that she pushed to the far side of the bed. “I got a couple jobs lined up, too,” added casually, testing the water.

He frowned, looking her over; plenty of energy now, but she’d push her limits and they both knew it. “You sure you ought to, with that side?”

“Yes, Arthur, I am.” The words came final, clipped and firm like she’d expected his resistance and he supposed she had. “Cover’s being here to get you rest and me work. We spend money without taking it in and you’s know as clear as I that we’ll be cased. Then some damn fool’ll try to rob us and that’ll end poor for him.”

Then she reached out, gentle in putting the back of her hand against his cheek, lips pressed to a thin line. “Fever’s light, but still ain’t loosed you from it,” she figured, moving to a small wrapped box. She drew her knife and knicked away the string binding it, sliced the paper so she could open it; inside it were an assortment of small bottles, the doctor’s orders no doubt. “You been resting?”

Arthur fought the flash of irritation, but not the quick words they triggered. “No, I been rustling cattle all day,” he shot at her. Then, in doing its best to make him look the fool, the infection’s hold kicked up and he started coughing; almost made him regret the strength of his sarcasm. He pushed it all down, gasped in a breath to steady himself, and glanced at her. “Of course I been resting, Sadie! The hell else can I do when walking down the hall near lays me out?” All that damn poisonous anger, full on directed at himself, cropped up again and he clenched his fists tight to channel it back to the fool what deserved it: Morgan, Arthur.

Sadie stopped what she’d been doing, a frustrated sigh slipped from her, and she sat down on the edge of the mattress next to him. “Doc Calloway said the fever’s what you got to sleep off,” she said, pressing the box of medical supplies against his hands until he unclenched them and took it. “Said it’s what’ll kill you fastest if we don’t beat it back. There’re some bottles in there that’ll help with sleeping, some that’ll reduce the fever.”

Labels filled with tiny writing covered the bottles and he spied a note, the usage instructions no doubt, tucked between them; Arthur put the box aside, on the nightstand, to check over later. “I don’t like not waking when there’s trouble,” he said. Admitted more, not being of a mind to talk about it most times; he’d been the first and last line of defence for years and it’d take more than dying lungs to still that instinct to not open himself to vulnerability with drugs nor feelings. “These things’ll keep me under and then what?”

“What’s there to be waking for, Arthur?” she asked. “This ain’t living rough and so long as we play our cards close, ain’t no one going to hound us.”

Points she had plenty, these a scattering of them to dissuade him; Arthur didn’t want to hear them all, yet couldn’t quite let up on them habits what kept him alive more than half his life. “There’s always trouble,” he grumbled. Least they should agree rightly on that; never more than a stone’s throw away was a bad turn of luck.

“Then I’ll deal with it,” she replied. Confident, and a promise that shadowed her words speaking to what she’d do to any what soured their lives. “And don’t you try saying a big man like you’s worried what folk’ll think if his woman fights for him,” added in that mixture of sour teasing she had when it come to society’s expectations of her gender. Never knew her to walk from an argument on that topic, nor could he expect it any time soon.

“That ain’t it.” Arthur shook his head, scratched his fingers through his hair until they caught on knots and tangles that’d started multiplying the longer he went without a hat, without grooming much either. “I’m trying here, Sadie, but I been running outlaw so long it’s all I know.”

“But nothing,” she said firmly, turning to grab the one box she’d pushed aside earlier. “You ain’t too old to learn how to live normal, so shut your whining.” This parcel she shoved in his arms, looking to change the subject, push them to some safer topics. “Now, here. I got you some new clothes and all, but figured you’d be wanting this first.”

The look she had about here would be enigmatic, a term Hosea’d taught him to mean women when they know, just _know_ , they got the hand up here and it were best not to fight it. Arthur frowned at her, the menace of it full ignored, and pulled away the twine so’s he could open the lid. Inside, well- He’d no great sense of speech at the best of times, griping and bitching according to most, but them smaller amounts of words he felt comfortable using tried to run out on him when he saw the hat. Weren’t his hat, no; couldn’t be, not looking this new and free of patched up bullet holes, burn marks where he’d had one too many close calls with fire. Similar cut to it though, similar braided leather trim. Closest thing he’d get to it, he realized, as he took it out of the box, and this one not poisoned by the man what wore it before him. Weren’t that his hands were shaking, not from lack of trying though, and he turned it over.

“Shit, Sadie, this’s too fine,” were the eloquence he managed once he finally rustled some words together. “Where the hell’d you get this?”

Sadie grinned, seemed tickled and smug both that she’d caught him off-guard, and plucked the hat from his hands, placing it experimentally on his head. “Ain’t nothing special, Arthur,” she dismissed his statement with ease, tilting the hat forward some. “General store had it, same place I got all this other stuff.” This with a gesture to the small assortment of parcels remaining. Some he could place – square and thin were fresh clothes, bags folded down like to have food, cigarettes, and the like – others were a bit harder to place. “Got you a new hunting knife too, but it ain’t fancy,” she added, grabbing up a slender package and tossing it up near the head of the bed for him to check on later.

Arthur weren’t ready to say it, but it felt good to have a hat back on his head; easy anonymity came with it, protection from the sun and rain, and all that. Always frustrated him when he lost one, sometimes hours spent casing an old job just so’s he could get the opening to dash back in and claim his damn hat back. Weren’t much that belonged to him than his immediate kit and it’d been like running without trousers on a cold day to be without. He adjusted where it sat – good fit, snug without pressing tight – on his head. “I suppose I ought to say thanks,” he said slowly, letting some distant cousin of a smile turn up the corner of his mouth.

“Only right to,” she agreed, pulling the satchel off her shoulder and swapping the empty box in his hands for that instead. “You ain’t got one no more, so I figured you’d do well with a new satchel. There’s a journal and pencils in there, too. Since you don’t got your old one, that means I can’t be sneaking a read on all them passages you wrote from Colter down to the Hollow. Now, I expect you to scribble in how much I annoy you in this one so’s I got something I can laugh over when I steal a peek.”

The audacity of her intent made him laugh, akin to the honest one she’d uttered as she fell to slumber next to him, and he looked at the satchel. Unassuming leather, with the basic clasp what’d serve well to keep it closed on a hard ride; he opened it, pulled out the leatherbound journal, fair and similar to how it weren’t dolled up too nice, with paper that’d take graphite on with no fuss. Like she understood how fancy things made him uncomfortable and went for things what’d help him feel like folk wouldn’t stare overmuch his way. The thoughtfulness of it, contrasted to their constant and short-lived arguments, made his throat thick and he nodded his appreciation. “Thanks, I suppose,” he muttered. Grateful, thy name may be Arthur, but gracious thou sure were not.

Sadie had been looking to the journal, which his hands were already itching to start in on, and shook her head, smiling at him like it were a secret between them both. “Only seemed fair,” she said, standing up from the bed and gathering up what all she’d bought, setting it on the dresser for the now. “I got myself fresh clothes of my choosing and all. Seemed unkind to leave you with nothing.”

The paper of the journal smoothed under his fingers, a bit of roughness in the pulp that’d help hold lines when he sketched the odd things what caught his eye now and again. Plain and unadorned, but she’d gotten him a good quality piece here, pages full empty and begging for graphite scratches. “Sadie,” he said, knowing well the kinds of costs what came with what she done today, “you used Cartwright monies for this, right?”

Quick shake of her head as she pulled three packs of cigarettes out of a bag and lined them neat on the dresser top. “I’ll get our,” and a pause to clear her throat, “ _recompense_ to compensate the room’s cost. Rest’s fine as is. Weren’t all that fancy, Arthur, and besides,” she stopped and shot him a challenging, smug look, “who said I paid for any of it?”

Arthur chuckled, knew full well she paid every last cent to have walked out with them all packaged up neat and tidy, but he shook his head and let her have it. She had plenty of spark to her fire, but the thieving touch? That took years of training and the sorts of moral flexibility she’d yet to develop, for all her lauding to being full ready to ride as an outlaw.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Companion Scene: [When Morning Comes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27625381/chapters/67589134)
> 
> Check out Transgressions for other companion scenes!


	18. Chapter IX: Valentine - 03: Letting Out The Poison

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arthur and Sadie are not the greatest at speaking to what they feel, but fighting? Hell, they can do that with fervor. That leads to Sadie heading out to drink at the local saloon, but also to a new job lead and reconnecting with an important friend and, to some, brother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

They were, each of them, kept occupied of a sort over the next week and some. After the one night at the hotel, they took up the room above the general store, like she’d said, with Sadie insisting on setting herself up on a bedroll nearer the woodstove; she claimed that it’d keep her warmer than any bed and, besides, he ought have the mattress until he’d recovered some. She tended to leave right after breakfast each morning, come back after dusk’d dipped shadows long over the town, and weren’t much interested in comforts so much as just sleeping once she closed up the door behind her, though she usually first gave him a tin plate filled with hot food brought from the local saloons.

Arthur, in turn, fought the different sort of battle and it turned out to be one of them hardest he’d faced all his life. When blood’d been let and muscles torn, it came easier then to recuperate because the injury put a limit on what could be done, drew a line in the dirt where it’d tear anew and prove its point. Harder, when it all burned internal, to know where that limit lay and harder still not to push himself to finding it each day. Third day of bedrest and he thought his mind might walk on him, driven to distraction by having naught to distract him, but his body? Less of the pain chased him now, but it full on let loose the exhaustion of months gone without stop. Like it sensed the time’d come to exact its toll for all them moments he pushed past what he ought have done and it were bent on scratching every last bit off that ledger. Spent most of his days under the thrall of the tonics and tinctures sent on by Doctor Calloway, half convinced the man laced them with sedatives in subtle vengeance for the discomforts he put on that O’Driscoll business run out the back of his shop, but he kept at them. Kept at trying to breathe and find some pace to it what might mend all he’d ruined, might give Sadie some peace she damn well deserved.

Displaced on what could be done and what the time ran to each time we awoke, he started in on the new journal to scratch out these confusions, chronicling most of the pain, all what’d happened since he wrote his good-byes in the worn one he’d shoved onwards into John’s hand. Bothered him to see how many times his words ended in self doubt, the curved line and dot of the question mark all too frequent a pattern backdropped to the pencil scratches. All them reflections on what he done versus what he should’ve done, what he could’ve done; all of them clearest now that the dust had settled.

Late in the nights, when he coughed himself awake, was when the shadows rose up to ask not why he ain’t stopped it, but whether he’d slipped and lost his measure of things along the way. Were it only the tuberculosis what made him question Dutch? Would he have followed, blind and loyal, to a different sort of grave? Dying ill made a man settle things, but living made him doubt it all. He noted it, transcribed the anger at himself in the fresh, new pages. Some nights, he’d get real angry at himself, scratching harsh grooves in the paper as he scolded himself in the text, then dragged heavy lines through it all to reject it, tossing the journal aside until the rage calmed and he could face the things he wrote in there, belittling and hateful as they were.

Never put those moments to speech, the doubtful poison of the words left on the pages and not put to air. Fool and poor enough to be bedridden most of the day, weak to have Sadie working, out and about without him to shoulder it equal. It embittered him, but he swallowed it. Left it. Conflicted and angry at being rendered to this state, where he’d no sense of value, nor self, no more. Those were times he’d lay on the bed, face to the wall and arms crossed tight over his chest, always around the hour Sadie returned, trying to protect her at least from the tempest boiling inside him; such nights were the sort when she’d leave hot food to run cold on the nightstand, leaving him fresh water to drink alongside it, before she turned in. Then, an hour after her breathing evened to the pattern of sleep, he’d eat the cold food, drink of the water, and take one more of Calloway’s bottle to toss him back into the thrall of slumber.

There came one day, when his mood ran foul from hours spent coughing, the pain-numbing blends doing little to soothe the raw irritation in his chest, that she came by mid-afternoon with a hitch in her step, a hand on her left side; pulled off that heavy duster without much care and he could see hints of blood had dyed the fabric of her shirt above the press of her hand. Torn a stitch hauling bales, she explained; she tried to shrug it off, dismissed it by saying the doctor mended it easy enough and already scolded her, wanted him to leave off it. Arthur didn’t.

“Sure,” he growled. “Leave off you ripping your goddamn wound open again doing work what ain’t right for someone with a torn side.” He’d been hazarding the outline of the window is his journal, all what he had to see the things going on outside this room, but his hand clenched and drew a dark line over it. The idea that she’d gone and made her injury worse playing a role they hardly needed sat sore and sour on him.

“I ain’t broke nothing!” she shouted at him, temper shortened to snapping by the hurt, the lecture Doctor Calloway like as not gave her. “I only slipped is all. Any fool could’ve done the same and it don’t matter what I were doing when it happened anyhow.”

Arthur shut his journal with the pencil folded in it, set it hard aside and stood from the same goddamn bed that’d become half a jail the longer he kept confined to it, glaring at her. The posturing sat like some sore, rubbed to bleeding each time she put aside herself for some damn reason or other, discarding his concern like he’d no right to have it. It fed the anger, a bitter frustration that she were headed down a road that’d kill her and he’d not be there to shoulder the burden, to offer the cover of fire to get her safe and she could damn well not see how much that bothered him.

Hell, the idea of her being anything but the Sadie Adler he’d come to know ruined him, a realization that painted stark how she meant something to him that he weren’t ready to let go of, weren’t ready to put words to. “You ever think of something other than Sadie in that thick head of yours?” he demanded. “All busy proving your mettle with the menfolk, you don’t think none!”

“Think about what, Arthur?” Sadie crossed her arms, full challenged him with the words and sharp tone.

“About them others around you!” he laid the words out, hot and harsh. “You think I ain’t bothered by what happened? Christ! You getting shot, mixed up in all this? That all’s on me. Don’t matter what your high and mighty choice was on dragging me out the Hollow, still true that none of it’d’ve happened if it weren’t for me!” He gestured to himself, a hard thump on his chest that struck an agonizing chord. “You go out there and rip a stitch playing like you need work? That’s on me!” He pointed at her, knowing she’d have some argument ready; always goddamn had one ready to refute anything that didn’t boil the way she wanted it. “And you playing martyr, that don’t muster a damn thing against it!”

Sadie drew her head up high, armoured thick with her pride, her eyes narrow and bright with anger. “I already told you why I done it like this!” she shot right back at him. “You hate it that much? Then tell me to git, damn you! But I ain’t leaving you yet. I told you, I ain’t losing nothing no more!”

The rage kept cresting over him, pushing his heart to racing and he knew his face a ruddy red mess showing it; he took a breath, not that it calmed nothing, and tried to reach for that bit of sense Hosea’d spent years trying to berate into him, like maybe he could get it said so’s she’d understand what her attitude done to him stuck here. “You try thinking of it the other way around, Sadie!” snarled more than spoken, lacking the calm compassion he’d wanted. “You think, after all I done to cut Marston free, to see what was my family break apart, that I’d be dandy with losing what stuck around? All I got’s left from that is my gun and you! You get that yet?” Then the anger broke, carrying with it the weight of the venom he’d been carrying inside himself for days, and he shook his head, put a hand to the pounding this’d started up in his temple. All the shouting took the air from him, left him lightheaded, and he sat back down on the edge of the bed. “ _Christ,_ but I ain’t ready to see you hurting on my account. I lose you, Sadie, then I got nothing.”

-

There were some hundred words she ought have said to that, to the way his final admission cut a hole in her heart the size of Lemoyne; Sadie were angry to the point of shaking and wanted to take it out on him, wanted to scream at him, but he’d taken the rodeo from her before she got out the damn gate. Her face ran hot, flushed with a mix of emotions, and she turned from him, strode to the door. Arthur looked hurting, like he’d made some painful discovery, and she ought stay, but she’d been the one in his sights building up to it and it stung. Then he took the anger from her, stole it like the goddamn outlaw he was, by saying what he done.

_I ain’t ready to see you hurting on my account. I lose you, Sadie, then I got nothing._

The sting traced along her eyelids, her jaw set firm as she struggled to sweep together the shattered indignation, piece it back into a mantle she could wear, but the shards slipped from her. Her breathing came sharp, quick, and she couldn’t slow it, so she just swallowed, licked her lips. “I’m going for a drink,” she said. Never looked at him, pressed by the need to get out and find the bits of her that made sense then; that heady sensation when her heart overwhelmed her, when she needed to get out and _think_ or drink or something that weren’t arguing no more because that’s when she made mistakes, missteps, and the fouled things up worse.

Sadie hauled the door open and left him there, her boots crashing hard down the stairs and out the side, where she waved off the warning look from the storeowner, the reminder that she ought be seen, not heard quite like that. She’d’ve shot him, was tempted to even, but swallowed it down to that sour knot in her stomach. That need to keep up, to stave off prying eyes; don’t matter that Arthur weren’t seeing eye-to-eye with her on what work she took, but she’d best keep things quiet so he’d stay safe because for all he claimed it first, he were all she had left too and damn him for beating her to saying it!

Headed out to the saloon over down main street and Sadie took herself a table off to the side where the afternoon drunks weren’t like to waste their time, and ordered herself a beer to start. More folk were there than she’d expected, but then today were an auction day and that meant money pouring through the streets and straight into the piss-drenched gutter. Auction payouts made for rich men with a real penchant to spend their small fortune on rounds at the saloon. Sadie’d come to familiarity with the raucous sorts that descended throughout the afternoon, and so she watched them start to trickle in as the auctioneers trailed off into silence.

Arthur never did come after her and that suited things fine; Sadie settled her temper best on her own, though this time she’d a liberal set of beers in her come evening’s fall to help the task. Each new bottle draped a softer cast on the world about her, plied away them shards and splinters of her anger as broken by his truths. Soothed it until she stopped thinking on how she wanted to curse and keep him safe, how she’d like as not tell him to put a boot where the sun don’t shine if he tried to chase her off. She weren’t losing nothing no more, not even if he became a burr latched under her belt and chafing things what weren’t meant to be chafed.

Six empty bottles lined up neat by the time she ordered some food from the bartender, fried pork belly and rich buttered biscuits to go with it. True finery for days when folk had more money to spend than sense in the spending of it. Seventh beer half spent blunted the last edges, stirred up some small sense of guilt to be the one enjoying the richness of fresh, hot food while he stayed hid from prying eyes, his own personal jail run ten by ten feet, day in and out. She’d maybe get him a hot plate right before she left, see if there were a cold soaked beer; none of it to mend what they’d shouted over, just ease some of them frustrations maybe.

Then that went to the wayside at the sight of his hat, familiar wear and patched bullet marks in the brim, cut above the crowding press of drunken fools. Sadie near surged to her feet to haul his ass out, ready start anew the shouting of earlier, and then it struck her that the hat he’d been wearing of this afternoon had no mends or tears to it. The one she saw here were the same she’d last seen on John Marston’s head, forced on him by Arthur along with his satchel and his hopes for someone having a future when the rest of the world burned. That stalled the initial leap of her heart rate, calmed her from shouting out curses in Arthur’s name and risked putting them to John’s.

What the hell was John doing in Valentine? Sadie left him and Abigail at Copperhead with Jack, meant to get safe and away where no one could find them. This town where he’d been part of the grand Cornwall shoot-up weren’t exactly subtle, about the same as having Arthur here, but at least he’d the sense to stay hid and a saloon? Weren’t hiding, Marston.

Sadie looked about the room first, checking for straying eyes or the hunched posture of folk trying not to be seen for all they was seeing; nothing came of it, no immediate risk, so she let John get his bearings some before whistling sharp to grab his attention, waving her hand to catch his eye and direct him over to her small table and the lone chair across from her.

A sign of the tension wound up the past few weeks manifested fast, his hand moved over his gun as he looked around, immediate in expecting danger. Once he realised who it was, John visibly relaxed and lowered his hand before he walked through the crowd to where she’d stood up. “Sadie Adler,” he greeted, holding out a hand to her; she grabbed it and pulled him in, a quick one-armed hug that triggered a nervous chuckle as he pulled back. “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked with a smile. Relieved to see a friend after a couple weeks of naught by foes, she guessed.

Felt good to see and feel someone Arthur trusted, even if her own measure of it were lagging – near no one’d earned hers but Arthur and Abigail, all said. John came close as one could to that, barely scratched in the margin, but still leagues ahead of anyone else. Sadie dropped back into her chair, picked up her bottle of beer. “What’s it look like?” she scoffed, falling to the familiar and relaxed, even feigned, taunting. Leaned back in her chair and taking a drink of her beer, she still kept a hand near her holster like she done most of the days, always looking over her shoulder.

John looked her up and down, then at the half-eaten spread on the table with a grin and a shrug. “Seems to me like you were eating, I suppose.”

Sadie laughed, surprised at herself for it. “You always do go for the obvious, John,” she chided. No heavy weight sat between them just then and it lent to her playing at him, something they both needed after the darkness of before. “I’m here for work,” she added, saving him from the asking.

Head cocked to the side with that instinctive, sharp inquisitive sense as he took the chair, leaned an arm on the table to close up the distance between them. “You got a job?” he asked, quieter. Like there was a secret on offer, but this was no bank she’d been casing or stagecoach needing robbing. Forgetting the one she’d been on and been near robbed and all.

“Nothing like that,” she remonstrated, a shake of her head. Sadie set the beer bottle down on the table, twisting it slow with her fingers. “Legal work. Labour at the auction yards, most days.” Including that one, until the damn stitch came out and put a stop to it.

John nodded, forced himself to relax back in the chair, mirroring her posture. Crestfallen from that, the disappointment he struggled to hide linked to how quick he assumed anything came back to the tasks he knew best: Robbing and stealing. A flicker of shame that first chance he got to talk about normal jobs, all thoughts went south of the law. “Figured you would’ve steered clear of Valentine,” he said, careful for all he tried at casual. “Blackwater’s a fine town, free of the shadows of, well... this place.”

Sadie shook her head. “I am damn done with hearing about Blackwater all these months,” she said, sharp and true. She downed the remains of her beer, signalled for two more. “Don’t quite know where I’m headed, John, when I think on it.”

“I sure can drink to that,” he lamented with a sheepish grin.

They talked a bit over the next few beers. Sadie asked how his shoulder was healing and John lamented it were easier to mend from that than being half-eaten by wolves, but damn if Abigail didn’t fuss at him equal over both. She kept it light as possible, biting down on the parts of her what wanted to tell him Arthur were alive and no more than a stone’s throw from there, though not quite well. She’d committed with Charles to let his memory die, and it were in accordance to that she kept the truths laid low. Logical though it was, it didn’t help her feel more than awful about it, knowing that them two had been brothers more than friends, but she doused the shame under yet more beer.

“How’s Jack?” she asked, words picked with care after her... Hell, was that eighth? Ninth? More beers than she ought have had, but it lay a soothing balm over the argument what sent her here, over the salt in the wound rubbed in by the lost stitch.

John paused on that, uncomfortable. “Fine, I guess,” he said with a shrug that attempted indifference, his relationship with his son troubled at best. “Abigail’s been keeping with him while I’m working, taking on odd jobs in town. Says he asks about Uncle Arthur a lot.” The fractures in his voice, the loss of a brother, cut deep in her, hurt more than the gunshot in her side; he grieved, wrapped up in loss, and she could say nothing to it. Then, just as she figured her strength enough to bear the guilt of her knowledge, John had to raise his head, a glimmer of hope seeking purchase in his eyes. “You rode back for him,” he started, hesitant. “Was he-?”

Sadie fought both urge and instinct to soothe the worry, to ease that grief, even as she carried the relief of knowing otherwise. “I’m sorry, John,” she said with a shake of her head, tears blurring at the edge of her vision. “I-“ She wanted to tell him, and sure felt that he deserved it; those facts pained her fierce, twisted her gut sharp. But she bit her tongue and blamed the tears on that, held the course as plotted.

Slow as the hope built up, fast it were to flee; John hung his head, pulling his beer close. “Don’t,” he said, half a plea. Too soon for him to hear it clear, and too soon for her to lay a convincing lie about it. “Forget I asked. It was stupid of me.”

Brothers true, for all it had been name over blood, and he’d bear the hurt long into his years. Sadie swallowed against the hard knot in her throat, stifling what parts of her screaming to speak; she was putting him through the same pain she’d faced with Jake and it killed her some inside. “Them fool Pinkertons didn’t get him,” she offered, a weak balm for him and a half truth to ease her conscience. “He made sure you got out, but they never got him.”

Staring at the wood grain of the table, definition lost amidst the scuffle and scrapes of heavy use, John nodded. Braced himself to look at her again. “What about Dutch? Micah?” A harder cant to his features to the last, though conflicted on the first name and would be a long while.

This she could be full honest on, a breath of fresh air that she greedily sucked in. “I found no traces of either of them,” said with a sharp edge to her voice. Dutch’d be a personal conflict for John, but not Sadie. She’d heard how Dutch left him off the train, saw how he’d left him in Sisika, and knew that he’d left others, Arthur foremost in her thoughts right then. The appreciation she had for Dutch van der Linde weren’t all-encompassing no more, her love lost steadily as she saw more clearly all he’d done, or chosen not to do. But Micah? Rat bastard Micah. She’d wished to have found him, gutted him for what he’d done to all of them.

“Figured that’d be the case,” he said, stopping to finish the beer. John twisted the empty bottle in his hands, thinking, then shoved it away quick. “Best I get going. Abigail gets tense if I’m out late.”

“How long’ll you be in Valentine?” she asked. Their plan to stick here some weeks, let Arthur’s lungs mend up, balanced precariously on the answer. If they was holing up in the same place, the risk of discovery compounded fierce and she weren’t sure how to handle it.

John shook his head. “Not long,” he figured. “Might head west a bit, try to get some distance from this fire Dutch started.” And there were plenty of fires to pick from in that spread, from the army down through the Pinkertons and scattered across the remains of a half dozen gangs holding blood feuds against any surviving van der Linde.

A nod; the rush of relief that he angled different than her strategy, with less overlap to put risk to what she’d laid out. “You keep safe out there, John,” she cautioned.

“I don’t mean to have what he done go to waste.” John’s voice carried a rasping grit to it the best of times, but under that she heard the conviction founded on what he’d lost in taking this course. “I’m trying the best I can.”

Sadie held up her bottle, a gesture to stop him from saying further. “Never thought otherwise,” she placated. “I’ve no mind to lose anyone else what matters is all.”

That triggered a lopsided grin, brought a bit of shine back to his eyes. “Sadie, you ain’t saying you’re soft on me, are you?”

She laughed at the charming audacity, seeing here some of the bits that Abigail had, maybe, when she fell for the hapless fellow. “You three matter to me is what I’m saying,” she said, honest in this at least.

“I figure we’ll be fine,” John said sudden, the edge of him softened and some of the hurt soothed what came from being taken out of all he knew. He paused, thinking, then forged ahead with that new thought: “There’s this job I got lined up. Week’s ride north to escort a string of horses to auction. Real fine specimens, worth more than them Braithwaite ones. Fifty dollars to tag along, dissuade rustlers from taking an interest. Me and this other fellow signed on, but he took sick this morning, won’t be fit to ride tomorrow. You interested? Pay’s real good and I’d feel better riding with someone I trust.”

Seven days out’d be a long while, but with the heat of the argument needing time to cool, it’d be good to get out and breathe a few days. Riding weren’t hard, wouldn’t pull on her stitches like most of the labour around town did, and fifty dollars was damn fine pay. “Mr. Marston, I’m not sure that trust is the right word anyone should put on me,” she joked, oft like as not to turn on friends with her temper as foes. “When you heading out?”

“About noon tomorrow,” he said. “Think on it, would ya? Like I said, pays real good.”

She could read him clear, giving her an easy job as thanks for what she done and, maybe, equal desperate to have someone familiar on the job in the wake of their personal hells. Seemed a smart call to take it, easier to trust him to watch her back, but could she tell Arthur it was John Marston she’d be riding out with? Hell. She couldn’t tell John it was Arthur that she was here trying to hide. “Well, John,” she said, standing. Unsteady after all them beers, she favoured her side in a way that had him quirk up an eyebrow, “I’ll come by the- Where the heck are y’all leaving from?”

The low rumble of his laugh, a sound familiar from ages ago in the camp, served to twist the stab of guilt she felt about lying to him, taking the conversation this way so she could keep from talking on things that might let on she’d done said lying. “Auction yards, about noon,” he said, standing with easier surety, clarity, and after far fewer beers.

“Right. Noon. See you then, Mr. Marston,” she concluded, tipping her hat his way before heading out of the saloon. She stayed just outside the door a spell, nodding to him when he stepped out and left, covered her delay by reason of a cigarette smoked down to her fingers and a second to stall her longer and give him time to ride out before she went back.

Sadie made it half the way to their let room before the guilt full caught up, hit her like a freight train and left her head spinning; all Abigail had done to help her, and what John meant to Arthur, and first chance she had to let them both have the knowledge that Arthur were alive? She crushed him by holding that back, broke down the last bits of hope that’d been held close to him this past week. Of all folk what deserved to know, it was John and she’d let him leave thinking Arthur were dead and cold. Disdain poisoned her stomach, made light her head as she stumbled into the alley, held herself up with a hand on the wall. Half her dinner ended up scattered in the dirt, hand wiping bile from her mouth, before she got measure of herself enough to continue the trek, cursing herself.

And damn but she’d forgotten to bring something hot to eat for Arthur.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember how I said it'd probably only be two chapters a week? I lied like a snake that didn't realise it was lying. The great debate this week was whether to push ahead with three chapters or to post an offshoot fluff scene; I went with the chapters, so I can put out more than one fluff scene when I post up the "extras" work for this fic (yes, there will be an extras work; too many side scenes non-critical to the plot but want write yes.) 
> 
> Happy belated Halloween! Please stay safe as we head into the winter (in the northern hemisphere) and cool for those heading into the summer! 
> 
> As always, I really appreciate those that have come here to read my contribution to the AO3 RDR2 fandom. I feel fuzzy happy. Also fuzzy. Maybe I'm a bear... 
> 
> See you next week! (Tweaked tags again to reflect John joining the story.)
> 
> \- Kichi @[KichiWhy](https://twitter.com/KichiWhy) (Twitter)


	19. Chapter IX: Valentine - 04: Hardest to Mend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a need to sort out what exactly was meant when they fought the day before; Sadie's too hungover to be gentle about it and lets slip who's lined up a new job she plans on taking. Arthur ain't happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

Arthur didn’t damn her for coming back drunk, empty-handed of food, nor for the fight what’d set her to run in the first place. Hell, but he put equal blame on himself for letting the poison stew that long, for letting it take the concern he had for her and twist it, shape it into loud words shouted and spat like they was two wildcats what crossed paths in a storm. All sharp claws and angry hisses that’d leave scars in their wake.

They didn’t talk it over neither.

Weren’t no point; the fighting was how they done it. With the salt poured rich in their wounds, words coated in them as they jabbed each last one deeper and deeper until the break, it weren’t worth it to take another run at it. They’d said what they each meant, heard it, and that were it. That was how he meant to handle it, leaving off the cigarette he’d been smoking by stubbing into the plate on the nightstand. He tilted his hat over his eyes so she’d assume him sleeping when she fumbled at the door, more drunk than he’d seen her any time before. Lost her husband and she’d kept dry, bearing the grief with the hurt writ clear about her; gang about her drank to celebrate the slightest victory and she’d have one or two bottles of beer with them, but never’d seen her stagger about the way he heard her tonight, how she stumbled onto her bedroll and dropped like a stone, her intent to sleep about the only clear thing about her.

And damn but he hated that it’d been his fool mouth that drove her to it.

_You hate it that much? Then tell me to git, damn you! But I ain’t leaving you yet._

Them words kept at him, haunted him through the empty evening until he scratched them out in the journal in the hope they’d stay there, instead of in his head. All his frustration unleashed and she heard it as nothing but hate for what she done, not hate at what he ain’t able to do. Least he’d been able to say something what mattered, what’d keep her from thinking he don’t want her there, before she stormed out.

_I ain’t ready to see you hurting on my account. I lose you, Sadie, then I got nothing._

Goddamn fool, Arthur Morgan; that’s what he amounted to and that realization chased him through the night, kept him awake late and through to the early of morning. Dozed only a bit, here and again, and then started awake at the first small noise, the first shift in the air that could be her waking; felt exhausted by the time Sadie roused herself with a groan and no small delivery of curses set upon herself as the hangover kicked in.

First time all his life he felt a coward for the fact he kept his hat turned low as she moved about, like he might lessen his presence and leave her some peace by feigning slumber, like he’d not start up them same arguments that drove her away. Like he’d not have to face that goddamn disappointment he’d quick become. Heard her step out, talk with the shopkeep about something on the landing outside the door, then she was back in the room and dropping a tin plate of food – breakfast – on the nightstand with a loud thud.

“I know you ain’t been sleeping,” she said, the last word drawn long in a yawn as she walked back to her bedroll, sat cross-legged there as she started on her own breakfast.

Arthur frowned and pushed back his hat, looking her way while she worked hard to look just about anywhere but at him in return. “Morning,” he managed, since the bluff’d been called. He pushed himself up, swung his legs off the bed, and looked to the spread of beans, eggs, and looked like some potatoes closer to cinders than fried, like some haunting spectre of Pearson’s cooking.

Sadie dug at her food, sparing the potatoes further torture to favour instead the eggs what might settle the twisted stomach of inebriation. Never looked his way as she done it, savaging the mess with her fork before taking a mouthful up and looking like she’d rather do anything but eat it right then. Couple bites in had her stopped; she lowered the plate to her lap, left the fork shoved on the edge of it. “I ain’t talking about it,” she warned, the start of something she needed said, “but you tell me now if you want me to git.”

 _Christ._ Turned out he ain’t been clear about that either and if he could have one goddamn time when he didn’t foul up what he’d meant to say to folk that mattered to him, then the world would end right then. Arthur sighed and pulled off his hat, turning it over in his hand. The shorthand note she’d left him the first day in Valentine’d been tucked up in the lining instead of his journal, where he could see it and get a sense of her them times he slept through day and night from the tinctures and the teas Calloway wanted him drowned in. Closest he had to a photo, he supposed, but he weren’t about to be asking for that like some lovesick fool. Just wanted something of her close and the words on the paper were the nearest he’d get to hearing her talk when she weren’t there.

“I ain’t want you gone,” he said finally. “I spoke true, Sadie, and I ain’t keen on losing no more. More ‘an that, I ain’t keen on losing _you_.” The constant of his life since the Hollow, one person what displayed more loyalty in a few actions than he’d seen the whole gang do this past year; he’d no want to chase her off and every reason to want her kept close, like she might keep him from sliding.

Silence fell heavy after that, broke by the clink of tin against itself, her fork taken up again. She nodded, though kept her eyes averted, and started pushing the food about the plate to find an appetizing arrangement of it. The way she kept at it put full definition to how much she’d had to drink the night before, and how thick her head must’ve felt from it, how twisted her gut must feel. “Alright,” she said, putting the plate down with a disgusted look. “Then I ain’t leaving you and you ain’t leaving me. Good.”

From then, it were like most things ain’t played out the way they had, the air about them carried less of a lingering sour aftertaste. Sadie got up and moved the rest of her food onto his plate, told him he ought eat that up because otherwise she was going to be leaving it spread in an alleyway somewhere the way she were feeling. Arthur tried, but between his appetite being stunted and that appetizing image she’d laid out, weren’t much he wanted to take on either. They still talked like they was on eggshells some and the looks he caught from her were brief, like she ain’t full shared what else haunted her, but it were better after an hour and some, almost like they ain’t argued at all.

“There’s a job up north,” she said from where she sat on her bedroll, meticulously cleaning her rifle. It’d been lacking attention, shoulder strap tied to the saddlebags and all but forgotten the longer they’d stayed in one place. “Riding security for some rancher with a bunch of fancy horses he wants brought down to auction. Pay’s real good, but I’d be out a week or so.”

Arthur kept worrying at the food like he might find his hunger hid under the now cold eggs and beans, the potatoes a lost cause and piled into a sad grave at one edge of his plate. “You sure you want to ride that long?” That side of hers kept pushing at him, worrying of a different sort than what he done with the food; tore a stitch not a day before and she was thinking of seven days in the saddle already.

“Beats mucking out cow shit and tossing hay bales.” Too easy that came, retort readied long before he’d started speaking. It rang true, all the same, what Sadie stated. Long as no trouble rustled up, the hardest she’d face would be setting and breaking camp - long as the weather held this late in the year. Headed north could mean rain, cold, or snow if she had to head up through mountain passes.

“You want me riding too?” Arthur put it out there, knowing he ain’t near where he could ride a day, but had to say it. Wanted to say it, to make clear that her not being around him earned no entry on the list of things he wanted without putting words so precise to it.

Sadie stilled her hands, oiled cloth stalled halfway up the length of the barrel, and murder lit her eyes bright in the look she shot him. “You-“ Held off the first things that came to mind, eyes closing as she tried to breathe, to avoid the same collision of wills what shook the walls yesterday. “You don’t get to _joke_ about that,” she warned him, final and firm. “Not until you can run down and up them stairs outside without being half dead, you hear me?”

The vitriol came off weak, peeled off the words easy to catch the underlying fears she hated showing about how quick her mind painted the grim picture, no matter how long he kept at resting. They was at eight or nine days in Valentine, the wet rattle in his lungs dried out some, the coughing slowing some each day, but still here she feared it coming back. Arthur ain’t wanted her riding out for her sake, she didn’t want him riding out for his; they were a dichotomy of conflicting intent and all he could do to address it were smile, nearer sheepish than smirk, and lean back. “Loud and clear, ma’am,” he replied, though he ain’t full done with the topic yet. Had things he needed to make sure on before he could rest easy. “How many are you riding with?”

“There’ll be a couple hands, I figure,” she said, folding the edge of the cloth to polish away a smudge of her finger from along the barrel. Sadie paused, absently brushing at her nose with that hand, cloth leaving behind a smear of gun oil, grey and greasy; all focused on the work the way she were and ignorant on the mess, it all almost seemed cute – if he were the daft sort to call it such to her face. He weren’t. “Ain’t too many horses, so’s just one other gun.”

“The rest of them are men?” Foul folk could be anyplace, but most of them foulest he’d run into were menfolk and they wasn’t always too kind to ladies the further they got from civilized areas. Arthur knew her to handle it, be fine, but seven days not trusting anyone around her? Weren’t wise.

Her hand stopped working the rifle and the challenge he expected to cut sharp never found purchase in her voice. “Yeah,” she murmured. “I know one of ‘em anyway, so won’t be a problem. Anyone bothers me that I don’t gut, I’m sure he would.” This with her half grin, cocky and sure, but kept aimed to the work she tried to get back to, oil still smeared on the bridge of her nose.

Arthur stopped with an egg-laden fork halfway to his mouth, watching her. Lowered it back to the mess on the plate, wondered if this was some person from the Sadie Adler what lived before Colm’s boys destroyed her, forced her to rebuild her soul to be all jagged edges and sharp words pieced together from what little they ain’t spoiled. “Old friend?” he asked.

The soft laugh, a single brief sound, as she shook her head had him narrow his eyes, searching her ducked face for something more substantial than the words she’d offered. “Don’t matter much,” she countered, hefting the butt of the rifle to her shoulder, sighting down the barrel. The smudge on her face’d started distracting him and he wanted to brush it away, but kept his distance. He weren’t that much a fool.

“What ain’t you telling me?” Couldn’t help the drawl of his voice, the way it lowered towards the darker, more threatening lilt he used to question folk, all as his suspicions raised that she weren’t sharing all the truth here.

Her head jerked up and the look of her, defiant and vibrant, spoke to her wanting to challenge that, to shove off the issue like it weren’t worth the talking. Sadie held her tongue, though, and he caught the flicker of uncertainty in her expression, the questioning of herself as she lowered the rifle to her lap. The smudge of gun oil stood out on her nose, taking some from her ferocity, but it were the way her shoulders dropped the next minute that stole the edge off her. “It’s Marston, alright?” she muttered quick, like he might not catch the name.

That pulled the little appeal to food had right out from him, fork dropped to the plate as he shoved it onto the table. Arthur pushed off the bed, looked down at her, and couldn’t place how he were meant to feel right then. Part of him like the air’d been knocked out of him worse than the late night coughing, part of him relieved that John ain’t dead, part of him tilted askew at why she’d not have told him if he ain’t pushed, and part of him... well, damn frustrated at the idea of either of them riding out when there was Pinkertons and bounty hunters and foul shit around every corner these last few months.

“John’s in Valentine?” Goddamn fool couldn’t keep himself out of trouble spots, places he were known better than he ought like, and that filled his tone with gravel, grating low and angry in his throat. “He tr-“ Arthur fumbled the words, pinched the bridge of his nose as he leaned his weight on the dresser, laid flat his free hand there. “The damn idiot fool _trying_ to get caught?! It ain’t been two weeks and-“ His hand clenched into a fist, lifted only to crash down with a thud on the dresser; it shuddered with a loud creak under the force. “Half of West Elizabeth to run off through, get some safe distance, and he picks _Valentine_?”

Anger shrouded the disdain, the worry, the frustration and he grabbed for his hat, looked for when he’d pushed his boots the night before. “Neither of you’re riding out, you damn fools,” he ordered. “Where the hell’s he holed up at? I’m-“ Claws scratched through his lungs, pushing the dull ache through the center of his chest as his breathing went shallow, quick the way it did when his temper flared and he pushed it down, hearing the wheeze starting and refusing to give it ground. “Gonna go beat some sense into that wolf-eaten bastard!”

The rifle leaned up on the wall and Sadie scrambled to her feet, crossed the room to block his path before he could get a step further, pushed him back towards the bed with her palm flat on his chest. “You ain’t going nowhere!” she growled at him, teeth bared like she might bite. “John don’t know you’re here. I ain’t told him. We’re lying low, remember?”

Twice she shoved at his chest and twice he glared down at her, unmoving; ten days couldn’t mend weeks of decline, but all that rest’d fortified him, took away the unwanted dances with vertigo, and even what all the sickness took from his body, he still outweighed her more than enough to keep from being pushed back. “That fool is my brother and I ain’t about to let him waste what we done to get him out by skulking around a town what knows him for an outlaw,” he snarled back at her, leaning forward with his shoulders straight, an old trick used plenty to intimidate others. “He ain’t gonna run and tell no one but Abigail and Jack that he got his ass trounced by his half dead brother, so there ain’t nothing and no one that’ll make a fuss.”

‘Intimidate _others_ ’ being the effective term of which were not Sadie Adler; defiant, she stood tall as her bones let her and refused to get out of his way. “You ain’t half dead to him,” she said, loud and clear and ready to fight. “Far as John knows and needs to know, you died up in the Hollow, damnit, so don’t go screwing what me and Charles laid out to _get you out_ , you stubborn bastard!”

-

“ _What_?”

Sadie’d heard his voice turn dangerous plenty of times, same as she’d heard frustration, deception, and a plethora of other tenors take it on, but this’d be the first time she heard it directed at her and the thought occurred that she’d stepped too far, crossed some mark in not explaining the shroud of death they’d cast on Arthur to keep him from being chased.

“You told John I was dead? After- Shit, Sadie. After all he been through, you told him I was _dead_?”

Deadly calm were the only words to describe it, the lethality clear in the way his fist clenched tighter, knuckles faded to white under the pressure. Sadie kept her chin up, her eyes daring him to make that first move, to push her back to where it ain’t so dangerous, but she weren’t moving herself. “You chased him off,” she turned the words, the threat right back on him. “Told him as much yourself that you weren’t good to make it. All’s I did is not correct him on it. Let him keep that way because it ain’t do no one good to say you ain’t dead until you beat this goddamn tuberculosis.”

These words penetrated through what she saw here as the enforcer of the gang, the violent son of a bitch that kept everything in line, and she weren’t backing down from it. Sadie kept her gaze on him, eyes hard and unfaltering against the rich cobalt shade that anger darkened his to. Pressed her advantage, pushed his chest again to make her point and kept her hand flat there, feeling the thudding race of his heartbeat, the rattle of his breathing as he fought to keep it under control. “Charles and I needed some way to get them Pinkertons, the army types, all them foul folk off your trail and so we let you die up there! Then the law, the government, all them folk ain’t got shit to trace once word gets to them, once they send some snake down to see the grave and wipe out all them bounties, all them crimes because there ain’t no way to serve justice on a dead man.”

Words were thrown to batter at him, break down this stalemate because it weren’t one she could go to drink off; three hours, four maybe, and she’d be riding out and they needed this sorted. Arthur’s lip peeled back and she saw the edge of his teeth, the bits where they’d stained from tobacco, the way the canines stood out like some predator’s deadly grin. “When was you planning on letting me know I been dead this whole damn time?” he growled.

They’d talked to the ruse, the play of married to avoid attention; they’d spoken to why it’d work and some uncertain bits about how it’d work, but all that turned to the story they told strangers, the façade they put forth to keep eyes from lingering too long. Sadie’d lost track of the rest, focus on keeping them alive, keeping herself from bleeding out, keeping him from choking and- shit, she’d lost her thread, ain’t like she were the grand conspirator like Hosea or Dutch anyway. Slipped and left out the part where he was more corpse than not in the eyes of the world and she’d intended it to stay that way.

“Things went on too quick and that damn fever,” she said, truths that started to pull away the foundation of her indignation, her anger quick to rise in protection of her. The fuse of her temper burned through its short line, but the spark fizzled to nothing against gunpowder turned damp by realization, by seeing that her preoccupation with getting them out’d kept him apart from her reasons, separate from the plans to keep them safe. Sadie saw it here, that this were the line she’d crossed, and she didn’t like the taste that left in her, the way it’d make them both hesitate, question a second whether the other was being full true. Worst, most bitter part came of knowing she owed him something on it, something she rare gave with sincerity, but would need to here. Took a heavy, bracing breath and she left her hand off his chest, rested it on his clenched fist instead.

“I’m sorry, Arthur,” she said, gritting the words past her pride when it tried to lock her jaw against the apology. “I ain’t meant to keep it from you,” added with a shake of her head. “Things just... kept going to shit and it fell off the wagon along the way.”

Arthur kept silent a long time, nostrils flaring with the force of each breath, made to exceed what his weakened lungs wanted to take, each of her words taken and examined, judged and kept or tossed aside and she didn’t move from it. Didn’t shy from this reckoning because, well... she supposed she deserved it some, though that she didn’t let come to voice. Busy forging ahead, keeping them on living, and she full treated him more a parcel than a person and the more she thought on it, the more it made her already aching head hurt, twisted her stomach to make her grateful she’d shoved most of her food off to his plate.

“Charles agreed to it?” Slow and careful in how he asked it, needing to know where exactly his control of his fate’d been taken and twisted to this purpose; wanting to know it were more than one of her brash and bossy decisions made to serve her goals more than others’.

Sadie nodded, still watching him, refused to look away now that she’d caught up his gaze, like she might get a better sense of him. “His idea to set a grave,” she said, the shards of glass shed’ from her words. “But it were my idea to have you stay dead,” she added, a brief surge of defiance back. “Don’t you go blaming him for my sins.” Hard to sense why she said it, but Charles had a goodness about him and she didn’t intend to leave that tainted in her wake, she supposed.

The hand under hers tensed, muscles and tendons pulled tight, and all she didn’t move to stop it, to give a reassuring squeeze or none of them soft touches. She just held his fist, laid her palm over it, and watched him as he fought the behemoth of his rage, his temper shorter than hers, and seemed like it all might explode when the hand under hers went loose, flat on the dresser, and he let out the breath.

“This-“ Started like he had a point, but Arthur stalled on it, pulled his hand out from under hers. “I don’t like it,” he said. “And I ain’t sure it’s right.”

The break of contact and the moment jarred her, separated the fighting words from his judgement of what she done, his reluctance in accepting it when he knew it’d kill John inside if he ever learned what all’d been kept from him. Arthur, alive against all the fates and odds and... hell.

“It ain’t right,” she said with a shake of her head; might well confirm it for true. Her hand stayed on the dresser, the grain of the wood worn smooth from oil and use over its years. “The whole point is that it ain’t right and just because I never told him you’re alive don’t mean I enjoyed laying the lies out.” Damn spilled half her beer and dinner in the gutter while fighting that guilt, a fact she held back from putting words to. “It’s that he got out, Arthur,” she added. “And we got- Don’t we got enough going on? Ain’t fair dragging him in.”

Arthur lost the fight in himself; she saw it in the way his shoulders shed the strength, the heavy presence he’d mustered up, same as she had, but twice as fierce and triple as taxing on him. Stepped back, sinking onto the bed, pinched the bridge of his nose tight. “Fool’ll ride even if you don’t show?” he asked, an exhaustion creeping through his words. Bore the weight of the world, or tried to, and even ten days rest couldn’t brace him to take it on again, but he tried. Wanted to make sure she’d be safe, wanted to see if he could find some way to stop them both from fool actions.

“Pay’s too good,” Sadie said with a shake of her head. “I ain’t even sure he’s full legitimate on this, Arthur,” added with the trace of a smile, to soothe the stinging burn that unburdening the truth onto him had inflicted. “Real nice horses, worth good dollars? Ain’t he the one that rustled a bunch of sheep right before Cornwall rode into Valentine?”

That put a bullet through the tension, shattering it with the choked laugh he got out before the coughing kicked up, bending him forward with the pain of it. Drove an ache through her matched to each one he suffered through, like it were her lungs carrying the roughness of it along with him. She moved close, sat herself next to him on the mattress and lay her hand over his back; derisive to herself at the idea that might soothe it, might help her feel something less miserable than her hangover, that could ease the conflict of guilt between what she’d figured best against what turned out right for Arthur, even for John. Felt each wracking cough, sounding more painful the drier it got, and she pushed down a lingering fear that this were the wrong time to ride out, that he could well suffer more in her absence and without her there to keep their cover safe, to run get Calloway if he took a steep turn south.

“I can pass on it,” she offered, quiet as her fingers brushed light against his shoulders, the ridges of lost muscle along his spine too sharp to lend comfort. “Doc said he’d want to see me by the end of a week, see how the stitches are.”

The words eased open the gate so the horse could escape, to leave him the room to shut this plan down, and she felt him still but for the deep, hungry breaths that rolled in after the coughing. When his face flushed red from effort and lack of air both, with all he could being spent catching up to what his lungs’d denied him the past few minutes. Arthur shook his head as the wheezing slowed, though he kept bent forward, the pain’s persistence an unending well. “Go,” he said, the word a faint rasp. “Someone needs to keep him honest.”

Sadie nodded, caught the grim humour to it, and risked lingering a moment with her hand on his back, rubbing a slow trail down the line of his spine, same as she’d done during the worst of his sickness in Van Horn, like she might leave him some comfort there. Hard not to notice when he shifted, rested the palm of his hand on her leg, nearer her knee, and she drew comfort in turn, that he ain’t hating her for it the way their angry fighting might make things seem.


	20. Chapter IX: Valentine - 05: Seven Days Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arthur figured Sadie set on driving him crazy with their arguing and the details she keeps forgetting to tell him, like how he's technically dead in the eyes of his brother. Turns out, not having Sadie around is driving him MORE crazy and he starts pushing himself to fill the hours.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

Sadie rode out to the auction yards some few minutes before the noon time, catching sight again of the familiar, worn hat that signalled Marston, _not_ Morgan, lollygagging about. Her mare, a dappled grey Hungarian halfbred fresh acquired from the Valentine stables, showed no hesitation when picking her way through the crowded clusters of folk milling to and from the auctions. Steady and sturdy were the values she’d been sold on with this horse and it served true enough to warrant using her cut of the recompense, as she and Arthur called it, to purchase the steed and saddle. It’d been months since she’d had her own horse, months since the O’Driscolls cleaned out her small barn and left only their own stolen mount there, and twice leaving her few possession to burn; it felt good to have her own mare, legally acquired and not on loan from the van der Linde gang.

What felt not so good were the hangover that refused to let up, the cottony cling it had on her mind; subsided from the sharp pains roused up dealing with the Marston issue at the let room, but prone to reminding her that beer were meant to be savoured, not soaked in. She’d her hat drawn low, brim offering some shade from the sun’s intensity, as she neared John. Sadie whistled much the same as she had in the saloon to get his attention, drawing it from checking over the saddle of his horse, the gear he’d stowed on the Appaloosa he’d be riding.

Less of that alarm this time, his tension unwound at knowing the sharp note of her whistle. John checked back over his shoulder, grinned when he confirmed that it were her. “Morning,” he greeted as he finished up what he’d been double-checking, rested his arm comfortably over the saddle, and tipped his hat toward her in a right (and joking) gentlemanly manner.

Sadie muttered some few things under her breath about him being all dapper, rolled her eyes so’s he caught the joke of it, and reined in her mare nearby. Weren’t no others sat about with John, but he’d only mentioned the one fellow fallen ill when she thought on it. “Rest of them out north?” she asked, sitting back in her saddle as she looked out over the hustle of the auction yards, the livestock, the mundanity of it all. They all seemed happy and hustling versus her headache and twisted stomach; lucky bastards.

“Yeah,” came his confirmation as John glanced about where she’d checked out, taking in the sights. His eyes were more shrewd about it, a look she understood as casing locations and jobs, old habits what died hard from his past profession. “You and me’ll cut across the Dakota, through the pass by Mount Hagen over to Lake Isabella,” he added. “Horses and hands’ll be there, west shore of it; they want the northern route ‘cause of some gang troubling them in the south.”

O’Driscoll gang had been rooted out here, she measured with a dry huff; they weren’t problems no more, not after her and Arthur dealt with the last of Colm’s hound, but must’ve been monsters to the locals before she put them down. Her fingers twitched on the reins, thinking that maybe one got away, figuring on if she could make a detour to scratch that itch with the chance of an O’Driscoll corpse, but it’d be telling. Moreso than her hatred of them already were. Sadie shook her head, pushed her thoughts some place less murderous. “How’s it you know they’ll be there?” she asked. “That this job’ll be good.”

John straightened up, gathering the reins up and mounting the Appaloosa. “The guy that lined up the job,” he said, “rustled a couple others like it when we were running out of Tall Trees, before the Blackwater job. Always turned out right, so I figured this one’d be fine too.”

Certainty in him, but different from the surety she saw in Arthur’s conviction, his being carefully measured and verified, never quite full trusted; John came into the life with a silver platter, from the grousing she’d heard, and it showed in how much more he could extend the benefit of the doubt, even small measures of it, to people unseen. “You trust awful easy, John,” she remarked.

“Been told that plenty,” he said with a rough laugh, settling into the saddle. “Never much done me wrong, though. Cost me a couple payloads, but we all screwed up some point.” He shrugged up a shoulder and indicated westward. “Ladies first,” was the insistence he relayed, some fancy society-folk tone playfully shrouded about his voice.

Sadie rolled her eyes, but nudged her mare ahead to start the trek. It’d take them a couple days to make it past Hagen, then another half to reach the lake and pick their way around it. That left most of the week for the run back; seemed fair, though could take longer if the weather shifted. Sun shone today, but mountains brought clouds and hail faster than a rabbit could run into its burrow. Hagen jutted up from the ground too far south from her ranch for her to know the patterns of fall around it, but ought to be similar; she’d keep her eyes on the skyline, make the call if things went bad.

They made good time out of Valentine, most folk riding into the town over getting out of it; gave them a few hours of quiet that her headache greedily hoarded. Sadie drank some water to soothe it, near pushed John out of his saddle when he realised how hungover she’d become and started teasing her on it, and otherwise they mostly minded themselves. She’d get him for the teasing, though, when her skull didn’t feel like it’d been stuffed with a mixture of cotton and nails.

“You know,” John was saying as he rode up alongside her, afternoon starting to push long shadows behind them. “I don’t think you and I ever did a job together, just the both of us.” Thoughtful, like he was actually recalling how little they done, compared to what she’d orchestrated to get him out of Sisika.

That’d been for Abigail more than him, truth told. Distraught and murderous Abigail had been; already lost her son once and how many times near lost a husband what weren’t quite yet wed to her. Sadie’d needed to do something to keep Abigail from the hell that the year had brought down on her, that Abigail herself had pulled Sadie from. All that brought her close to the Marston family, but true that she didn’t know John half as well as his wife.

“Hardly no one ran jobs with me,” she replied shrewdly. “Dutch never took me serious about robbing, so’s about all I done, well, it weren’t done with his blessing.”

“What I seen, there at the end,” John started to say, looking out over the scattered trees that preceded the forest, the plateau giving way as they picked their way down towards the Dakota, “seems to me that Dutch missed out on some golden opportunities then.” Roundabout way he had of paying a compliment, but she caught the meaning of it; that by leaving her idle, the gang’d suffered. He let out the huff of a laugh, shrouded by disappointment, that pain of regret. “The Dutch I knew- _thought_ I knew, well... He’d never have kept you idle. The man knew everyone’s strengths, how to play up on them, and didn’t matter where you was from, what colour you were, none of it.”

The ideals, ever casting Dutch in the softening shade of the rose-tinted lens, had come to disgust her as time wore on. “I ain’t interested in the Dutch y’all knew,” she said, frank and final. Sadie had less and less compunction about saying it the more she thought on it. What she’d first pieced together from Arthur’s fevered words, his jarred recollection of how his mentor, nearest thing he had left to a father, walked from him, it changed her and hardened her view of van der Linde. “The Dutch I knew promised safety and security, but ain’t ever delivered on it. The rest of the gang was what done it, while he planned and pontificated in that tent of his, miring us deeper and deeper in shit he stirred up.”

Rubbed John the wrong way with her words, she could tell by his hands on the reins growing tight without pulling, and he looked down, not challenging her on it the way Arthur did when she’d pushed him too hard. Similar in temper, but different about expressing it; they really were like brothers that way. “I wish you’d seen the Dutch we knew,” is what he decided on saying. “Not... well. What you saw, it weren’t him no more. I been thinking on that plenty, and it’s true. He’d been gone a while at that point, but I never saw it. None of us did, I figure.”

“Arthur had, at the end.” Sadie’d no hold on the words, left her mouth before she’d registered them and she followed it with a curse when she saw the shock, the way it cast a stricken cloud over him. “Sorry, John; I ain’t meaning to bring up the hurt.”

“No. It’s true, I suppose.” John looked ahead for a while as the edges of the plateau melted into the forest, a cool fall wind pushing at the leaves. “I just-“ Hitched up on the words, stuck somewhere in him, and he couldn’t seem to face her. “Don’t like talking about him. It’s like I get stuck there, with all that stuff that happened at the Hollow. I don’t know. It’s like I ain’t gonna get past it if I keep holding onto him.” This said with a tap to his head, then to the space over his heart; two places it were near impossible to full divest any love from, especially that of a brother.

Sadie dug into the pockets of her duster, pulling free a cigarette to keep from saying nothing stupid; lit the match and brought a small ember tip to light. The lit one she held out to him, taken with a rough thanks, and she repeated it for her own. It were when she had her first lungful of smoke, exhaled slow as she measured a way to speak to it what wouldn’t put truth to his ears, but would give meaning of sorts. “John,” she started, tipping ash off the cigarette before she drew in another breath, held it before she could figure out the words what’d work. “You try to cut him out, it’ll be your heart you end up cutting out of your chest,” she said finally, smoke spent with each word, curling in the air. “I tried. All the time, them first few weeks,” added as she looked ahead, thinking back to Colter, to the time she’d found a knife and thought that maybe it’d hurt less if she took out the heart, the thing that loved, so that she could let Jake go. She shook her head, shoved that recollection back in the past where it belonged. “It don’t work.”

The steady, slow sound of hooves on the pounded earth what made the trail served as conversation for the next few minutes, before John lifted up his head, the forgotten cigarette held in the crook of his fingers. “Just wish I knew what does work,” he admitted.

“Beer don’t,” she said, earning a rueful laugh from him. “Least, not the amount I had last night. Shit, don’t you ever let me do that again.” She pressed her hand against her temple, the aching pounding at least almost done with her by the way it’d started to recede.

John continued to laugh, shaking his head. “Folk’ll call me a fool for plenty of things, Sadie, but I ain’t idiot enough to try and make you not do anything,” he said, the clouded mood broken between them. “I got some ginseng though. Boil it in water, like a tea, when we make camp and it’ll help. Hosea used to force it down my throat any time I tried beating Arthur at drinking.” The lament of his tone, playful and fond memories replacing the ache of his loss, were a better sound to be hearing and spoke all too clear of how rare, if ever, it was that John Marston beat out Arthur Morgan in no drinking contests.

-

> _These few days spent knowing I am dead to all but Sadie and, I think, Charles have been quite possibly the loneliest that I have known. People are everywhere in Valentine, and yet I know and am to know none of them to keep us safe._
> 
> _I have enjoyed anonymity plenty in my time, but always did I have the gang to ride back to. They would challenge and frustrate me in equal measure, but to be without that is what I think it must be like to be set adrift._
> 
> _Each morning, I read the note from Sadie and the creases have begun to wear from the constant folding, but it reminds me of her sharp wit and how she would not have me wax poetic as I do now._
> 
> _Instead I must rest to chase off this damn sickness that makes it impossible do more than walk. I have taken to the stairs, walking to the ground floor and then back to the room, at least five times per day. It is small in measure, but it gets easier each time. I no longer feel like death upon surmounting them, but nor do I feel very much alive._
> 
> \- Arthur’s journal, autumn 1899

-

Two days of Sadie gone, where the only time he weren’t alone came in the mornings when he would slowly haul himself down the stairs to take on the boarder’s breakfast, drove Arthur’s patience to parched. No matter how he put it to pencil is his journal, he ain’t able to do more than feel the irritation at himself, at the toll the tuberculosis forced him to pay, and the hours he spent doing nothing after years of never having nothing to do.

Doctor Calloway, whom he met with once, did not lend sympathy to him over the frustrations vented, that he weren’t back in the saddle after this new week. Platitudes, instead, that made Arthur grow angry, irate at hearing how it’d be months before he could come near his former health. Weeks before he ought even try to get on a horse, to be back in the saddle quite literally. Threatened the doctor with a good walloping for that, the man’s jacket scrunched up in his one hand and fist raised to hit him when the coughing struck up, saved him and humiliated Arthur in the same moment.

Tired of coughing. Tired of sleeping, no matter that it was all his body wanted to do. Tired of the exhaustion that small, meaningless tasks brought on, kept him on edge and near counting the hours of her being gone. He started getting up more, moving about the room at all hours. There lay a heavy chest, locked tight with their few possessions, and he’d shove it about while cursing at how weak he felt in doing it. Coughing for what seemed like hours after, his only solace come from the blood no longer staining red his spit.

There were times, too, that he found himself on the floor after an aggressive attempt at running down and up the stairs, passed out from the coughing and the wheezing, but he kept at it. Kept standing when his legs crumpled under him, kept fighting and pushing in this window where Sadie weren’t here to yell at him for going hard to get some measure of worth back in himself.

Third day of Sadie’s ride out, he stumbled his way down the stairs for breakfast and, ignoring sense and his promises to rest out of sight, moved outside afterwards. Sat himself on the bench by the general store’s door, hat drawn low and beard grown thick from weeks without care that it were enough to differ him from the Arthur Morgan of the wanted posters, the Arthur Morgan what shot up half the town. Kept off the worst of his cabin fever, watching the people of Valentine and giving passing, sparse greeting.

Fourth and fifth days, he took to walking the planks along the main street, pausing here and there to lean up on a wall. Catch his breath or rest some, but he pushed himself further each hour before he’d turn back, return to the room so he could try it again later. Started to tip his hat to the women, managing the spectre of polite, and didn’t raise no scuffle with the men no matter how tempted he got to lay them out with a beating. Helped to bleed out the poisonous frustration what took him when he stayed up in the room too long, left to his devices and the damn infection that he could never afford to forget.

That fifth day marked a change, a milestone he took comfort in when he made it the full length of main street without collapsing, his head spinning only some when he stopped at the fence bordering the church yard, opposite the sheriff’s office and across town from the hubbub of the fall auctions. Felt quieter there and he stayed a while, made notes in his journal and sketched a small flower he saw rested on an equally small gravesite, where he supposed someone’d had to bury their child much as someone had buried his.

Sixth day and he made the trek twice, lungs aching but mind feeling something closer to living. Did a positive number on his mood, like the further he got from the confines of the and the longer he stayed out from it, the saner he felt. Stood a far cry from where he wanted to be, but after nearer three weeks of being bedbound, it were progress and he weren’t giving up on that.

Then the seventh day came and he figured on watching for her arrival out at the stables; he headed out late in the afternoon and leaned up on the fences. Dragging on a cigarette, he watched the horses mill about, eyes drawn to a chestnut pinto mare that moved steadily along the fencing, head lowered only enough to counterbalance her gait. Where he was leaning, leg braced on the lowest railing, he’d be too close to her space when she neared and so he straightened up, stepped back to keep from spooking her.

Fear did not enter the mare’s eyes, nor her posture, as she neared where he had been, pausing to scratch the side of her neck along a post. Seemed the itch there weren’t going nowhere, because she kept worrying at it with a heaving breath, a snort. Arthur chuckled; always had loved horses, tamed or wild; they was most about what served them, but good ones were loyal and smart. This one had intelligence in her, persistence in how she pushed at that one jagged edge of the wood to scratch at herself.

“You okay, girl?” he murmured, stepping up to the fence a dozen paces down the line, leaving her space. The mare stopped moving her head, watching him as her ears flicked back and forth; came off thoughtful, like she were wondering how many apples she could fool this stranger to feeding her before he wised up to the use. “S’all good, girl,” he soothed, tossing the cigarette down in the mud outside the corral, grinding it with his boot.

Seemed the smoke were what kept her off, initially, because she moved in when he held out his hand, kept his head turned away so she could come and nose at him, decide how big a fool he’d be. Couple huffs and she kept her nose in his palm, so he took the opportunity to look her over, raising his free hand to scratch the long plane of her nose.

Arthur spent almost an hour talking with the mare, quiet and softer than what he lent to the ears of people, and turned out she had patience for the gravelly tone of his voice, the coughing that sometimes interrupted it. Real fine temperament on her, strong build; he even complimented her on it, took and shared an apple he’d tucked in his pocket with her. Meant to be a halfway split, but she finished her half and the calm eyes she set on him told him she full expected the other half. Laughed some at that, relented only by giving her the quarter of it.

“You ain’t the only one what likes these, little lady,” he informed her as she crunched through the last of it.

Evening fell with a cool rain and Arthur started back to the general store, glancing out over the horizon to see no strand of horses, no riders coming in. Concern seeded itself in his mind and he stalled long as he could, murmuring to the mare as she followed him along the line of the fence. No sign of Sadie, nor John for that matter, and he delayed himself further by ducking into the stable to talk with the lead hand.

“That mare out there,” he drawled out, hands tucked into the pockets of his leather jacket, “with the chestnut coat. She got an owner?”

“No, sir,” the distracted answer, the fellow having some trouble with a stallion led in a few minutes before.

Talked some with the hand, helped him calm the horse some, and Arthur figured, hell. They was going to need to leave sometime and weren’t right, to him, being without a horse, so he paid for the mare. Dug the money out of his satchel to cover it, tack, and stabling fees to cover a couple weeks. Took up another hour, sorting all that out, and still no sign of Sadie. Concern took root then and he told himself it weren’t no set schedule like a train, she’d just as likely have been early as riding in late.

Stopped in at the ground floor to buy another pack of cigarettes, some oat biscuits for his new mare, then he ran straight out of things to keep him about the town. Went back to the room and kicked up the fire in the small wood stove, the chill of the rain permeating pretty much everything. Worried him some, the rain; this elevation’d be fine, but Sadie’d mentioned riding north and that quick turned into the Grizzlies. Late in the year, could run into snow or some hellish blend of both.

That night, Arthur found sleep to be an evasive bastard, leaving him standing and pacing slow through the room. Weren’t able to clear the idea that the rain were tied to a bigger storm system, that maybe Sadie’d been caught up in that and John with her. Run under it all were the thought that last time them each had trouble in the mountains ain’t worked out well for either of them and it were all he could do to keep from saddling up his new mare and riding out to make sure they ain’t stranded or worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That was quite a week, folks. WOW. Just, wow. 
> 
> These chapters were a bit more work because they deviated completely from the original penned version; I basically wrote them both from scratch. Next week'll be easier, because it'll align again. Also, it's interesting because writing Arthur and Sadie arguing about John here is such contrast to what's going on in the current draft of ASM, which is far in the future of the typed up version. I keep having to make sure I don't screw up what the characters know and do not know about the other characters.
> 
> Love and hugs to everyone!
> 
> \- Kichi @[KichiWhy](https://twitter.com/KichiWhy) (Twitter)


	21. Chapter IX: Valentine - 06: What Was Known

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inclement weather drives Sadie and John up to a place that lingers with nothing but bad memories. Attempting to face the past is not always the wisest course of action.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

Damn mountains.

There’d been a time Sadie thought life in the mountains the challenge she needed, even wanted, to keep from a dull existence. A time when she didn’t mind the nip of cold weather, took it in stride with the expectation of a warm fire to shed the chill and a warm husband to keep it further at bay. It’d been a simple take, but served her; she’d come to love the crispness of mountain air, the clean taste to it after a snowfall, and the freshest of waters that ran down from the snowpack in the early spring. Things that she had taken enjoyment in, called herself fortunate to experience, but...

There’d also been a time when the mountains dragged in the O’Driscoll scum what shot her Jake dead and tore up her home, took everything she’d known and forced her to start anew. Even then, it went under the protection of another group of outlaws she hated just as much in the outset. Things that she did not want to look back on, considered it a curse to have survived...

The current time, though, fell in neither of them categories. Three days out from Valentine and a day behind their roughed out schedule united her and John with their employers and charges, twelve horses of fine stock and various temperaments to match three ranch hands that shared a temperament of not wanting to riding south on the easier path. Turns out there had been five ranch hands earlier in the year, with two of them picked off and picked clean by Colm’s boys, and now they was all afraid and wanted the northern route.

Were fine and dandy, but for the clouds she spied caught up on the mountain peaks late in the third day; Sadie watched them, felt the chill wind what started to pick up, and talked it over with John. The both figured it safer to head south and test their luck against what wasn’t left of the O’Driscolls. She had experience dealing with their lot and John, well. Weren’t no love lost between him and them. Any trouble cropped up and they’d handle it, Sadie with a vicious smile all the while.

They was outvoted by the ranch hands.

Only thing what made that tolerable was the offer to double their pay and, well. Hundred dollars ain’t something to pass up, even when headed north brought them both uncomfortable reminders of snow, blood, and death with the increasing elevation.

Resigned to the idea, it was on the fourth day they set out around the north shore of the lake and up started a steady drizzle; this late in the year, most of the leafy trees were a few stiff gusts away from nude, too few leaves to keep them dry through the forest. Sadie buttoned her oil-slicked duster tight and tilted her hat to run the rivulets of water down around the back, over the collar. The chill of the rain in the air made the stitches strain and ache; though maybe that were the four days riding without much break, without taking the time to check on her side so’s John didn’t start asking questions on why her skin looked like a half-formed canyon torn into the earth.

The horses were tethered in a line, managed by the ranch hands, and things went well enough for the day. For the cold rain. They set camp on the northeast shore of the lake, set back from the waters and into the comfort of trees. Coniferous ones here and they provided a drier bed of needles to settle on, wider hanging branches to spill the rain away from the tents.

John set up a scout fire for his watch, the rest of them clustered deeper in the woods; Sadie set up her tent just outside their cluster and boiled some water clean, filled with salted meat and a can of potatoes to make a stew that she shared with John out at his scout fire. They talked some about how Abigail and Jack were doing – both fine, for what’d happened – and kept off sensitive topics, like the gang as a whole.

Since he were taking the first watch, she went back to her tent and slept a spell, then threatened to chase him, hogtie him, and toss him in her tent to sleep when she came out just past midnight to relieve him.

“Ain’t no point setting yours up if mine ain’t gonna be used the rest of the night,” she’d told him airily. Turned out it were easier to convince him of things than to convince stubborn Arthur, especially them ones that offered small comforts. Her firm suggestion brokered no fighting, no real arguing, and she only needed a few light threats to have him stay there as she took up her post just beyond the scout fire, duster buttoned close and hat drawn low. Sadie watched through the latest hours of night, then through into the dawn as the rain trailed into a sleet, some heavy flakes of snow mixed in that started a worry in her. The idle, if cold, rain seemed a precursor to an autumn storm that ain’t full started up yet and the darkness that persisted at sunrise, light blocked by stony edifices and dark clouds, confirmed the worry.

Hell.

She rode out ahead of the line once they broke camp as snow started to drift down thickly; went slow, letting her mare pick out the path as she neared the main split in the trail. One headed north, up ways she’d familiarity with, and the other route south by the mountain, which’d offer two passes back down to the Dakota. The trail she checked wound along Beartooth Beck and she weren’t much into it when the sleet picked up over the snow. There were plenty of rocks in place of hard earth on the trail and sleet clung needily to them, taking an icy sheen that made the riding of it treacherous. She looked ahead, saw all too many flat stones what decorated the path along its length, shining with the icy embrace of frozen rain. Twelve horses, with five more between her, John, and the hands would mean slow, risky going on foot and she called it as not worth the risk. Better to hole up somewhere and let the storm pass than to push ahead and risk losing a horse to a broken leg, losing an investment to a lame step.

Sadie turned her mare about, nudged her off the beaten path to intersect sooner with the line, have them divert north at the split so they could take the long path up to a place she weren’t too pleased to visit again. She waved John over, blocking the trail south with her horse, and explained the dangers, the ideas. “Best I figure,” she finished, “is we head up to Colter. Ain’t far from here, bit higher up, and should be easier on the horses than the ice.”

The way his face paled, the unpleasant memory just as ripe in his mind for differing reasons, made it clear he felt about as excited about it as she. “You sure there ain’t a better way to run it?” he asked, mind that his voice didn’t carry much hope for it.

She snorted, nodded her head to the three boys from the ranch. “They ain’t wanting south and these passes are the only way ‘round the mess,” she said. “I used to live up this way and there ain’t no way to make the ride and keep the horses safe in weather like this.

John drew in a slow breath, let out a heavy sigh. “I guess,” he groaned. The anxiety ripe between them had the horses shifting, his Appaloosa looking ready to turn around and run down the mountain the minute the chance arose. Her mare, steadier and sturdier both, only shied a couple feet to one side before Sadie had her back under rein.

“I’ll tell ‘em, if you wanna ride up ahead, make sure no one else’s there?” he offered.

Sadie nodded and urged her mare forward, taking the northern branch at a brisk pace to make sure there weren’t surprises waiting there, feeling that John’s horse had the right of it. Better to head south, in the bitter rain, than north, but it weren’t their call to make.

-

The snow ran not as deep and the cold not as instantly biting the way it’d been last time he’d been up in Colter. At least, not against his measure of them. Suppose that it turned out to not be much of a measure, given his record of, in Abigail’s words, idiot deeds done here. Rode out scouting with Micah, then split off, and ended up lost in the endless white winds and drifts; suppose that hardly made him a reliable barometer for life up here.

John absently rubbed a gloved hand along the deepest of the scars that marred his face. The damp cold surfaced an ache in them, jaw hurting where claws and fangs had cut through flesh, etched their edges in bone. Colter ain’t been a pleasant winter ride come on the heels of an unpleasant ferry robbery and he supposed he’d been blessed with only remembering bits and pieces about his time up north, but none of them were of the good sort. When Sadie’d rode back from scouting and said the pass run slick with sleet and ice, Colter seemed it was the better option for all its unpleasant associations. Higher elevation meant deeper snow, but less ice for the horses to slip on as the underlying rain never started this high up, never had the chance to freeze over.

The chill in the air was damp and John left the three hands at the stable to deal with the horses, crowded in there tighter than sardines in a can, as he hauled his gear to the main cabin where Dutch’d held up with Hosea and Arth- Yeah, he pushed his thoughts to beating back the cold and not them personal associations with the place. It’d beat the drafty old church he’d laid up in; after a couple weeks confined there, he’d be happier tearing it down for firewood than anything else.

Took him a while to kick the remnants of an old fire and a dead squirrel from the fireplace, then to find enough dry wood in the half snowed-in woodpile, not to mention tinder enough to catch a flame. John coaxed it, muttered and murmured sweet nothings at the little smouldering speck of heat until he started to hear the reassuring snap of sap and wood catching.

“You talk that sweet to all your flames?” Sadie’s voice came wry, over from the door where she’d dragged in half a load of firewood and her kit while he played a pathetic Prometheus.

“Only the real shy ones,” he said, a smile teased out with the words. Leaned back on his heels and held his hands out to the traces of warmth that wisped stealthily from the flames. _Christ_ had it got cold when the rain switched to sleet and he swore his hair’d been like as not to break in his hands when he tried to push the wet strands of it away from his eyes. Worse than sand getting everywhere too, the cold; least he could beat the sand off of him, but this chill hugged tighter than a boa constrictor and twice as stubborn to get away from. Hell, give him the unrelenting humidity of that stinking swamp over this.

Sadie dropped the wood next to the fireplace, set her saddlebags and bedroll down further out, and then shrugged out of her duster. She dragged a chair over nearer the fire and draped the snow-heavy coat over the back of it to dry out some. Her hat she rested on the seat of the chair to do much the same, then crouched down next to him. She pulled off her gloves and reached out with her hands, vying with him to absorb some portion of the heat like they were trying to coax a dog to prove which one of them was favoured. Like most dogs, the fire only cared about what fed it, so he pushed another slender length of kindling in and savoured the burn of the flames, even briefly.

“Them boys took the other cabin,” she said, words brisk as the air and about as cool as it felt. Been quieter the longer the day drew out, the closer they come to the old mining town; call him a fool, but seemed the two correlated some. Odd of her to have left off half his cracked jokes and comments as they rode up, his way of breaking the tension lost in some void of her mind.

John nodded and pried off his gloves, lay them down to dry and warm up. “You alright?” Tested the air, casual, with the query.

A noncommittal response as she watched the fire without seeing it. Came off lost by it and he leaned over, nudged her with his shoulder to get a measure of how far her head’d run off. Sadie blinked, looked at him with a furrow in her brow. “What, John?” she asked, like she ain’t heard him the first time and were annoyed by the jab come out of nowhere.

“You been quiet,” he remarked, shrugged up to stave off the idea that maybe he were concerned or that she needed him to be concerned. Never met a damsel so unfamiliar with distress than Sadie Adler, excepting Abigail Roberts, and he’d no intent to assume her needing of anything. “I ain’t expecting you to yammer like Uncle – and I mean that. Don’t need two of his sort running their mouth. But, I don’t know. Seems like you’re different than you was yesterday. Quieter or something.” John never had been big on prying or digging about; mostly, he kept his issues to himself, or tried to. Often it ended up with everyone knowing anyway, so wasn’t sure why he bothered if he were that damned easy to read.

Sadie stared at him, seemed some like she looked past him, then lowered herself to sit cross-legged on the floor, the chill in the wood leeched away by the fire. “This place,” she said, eyes not quite focused on anything, “ain’t filled with good memories.” This with a faraway lilt to her voice, like she tried to find some thoughts that were good, but they came few and far between.

John sat down, heavier and lankier in the way his limbs folded up under him, and pushed hair from where it swept over his eyes. “You and me both, Sadie,” offered in commiseration. A sardonic, painful half laugh followed it, caught up in his chest when he thought back to the May storm.

There came a second when it looked like she might say something, might cut him down with words or a knife, but the spark died before it become a fire in her eyes. Sadie pushed her braid back over her shoulder, apprised him carefully, before she asked: “You alright, staying here?” Switched tactic and topic, words meant to push him away from what caught her up. Set a safe distance between them without delving too deep into messy things like feelings; Arthur’d been like that and seemed to him something she had that in common with his brother.

“Don’t matter what you heard about me, but I’m no spring flower,” he said. “I’ll be just dandy here.” Teasing seemed his best way to connect with her. Any time things got serious around Sadie, it all tended to go up like dry tinder, with anger her default way to handle trouble. John took odd comfort in walking that fine line alongside her; it was like having a shadow of Arthur around. More than a few ways, that offset some of the ragged tear in his life from where he’d been ripped out, that part of his family torn from him.

Sadie laughed, her eyes focused on him and the present again, then back over to the fire. “Guess you’ll have to prove it,” said, chin tilted up. Daring him to make good on that statement, bolstering the both of them with the bravado that came with it.

“I will.” John chuckled, nudged her shoulder with his again; whatever’d come over her, seemed he’d managed to pester her out of it and that’d do.

“Get some rest, John,” she said, clapping her hand on his shoulder and pushing him full over with a short laugh. “I’ll take first watch. Switch at midnight?”

John rolled back with the shove, laughing despite the indignity; it took some of the bitterness out of Colter, joking like this, and he gathered himself up, nodded. “Sure.”

-

First watch played out with no fuss, the snow falling thicker than any thieves out there with an eye to rustle horses. Sadie near shoved John into one of the rooms once the warmth of the fire permeated the building, told him to set up and stay comfortable on one of the beds while they had that kind of moth-eaten luxury. Then she went back to the main room, added some logs to the fire, and sat herself by the table tucked under the window, rifle held across her lap as she kept her eyes outside.

Hours passed, broken by the uneven snap of the fire, and she watched the snow drift down with all the arrogance of a blizzard, but none of the staying power. This was the kind of snow that came hard and fast early in the season, then melted away within a day; she knew it well, figured they’d be safe to ride down starting the next day, maybe take the high path out by Barrow Lagoon, easier to follow than the pass next to Hagen. She’d scout it come the morning, see how thick the snow and ice were, how deep it ran; at a higher elevation, it’d be more likely to be snow longer, less a treacherous build up of ice over mud.

The longer the night stretched, the more she sat and listened, the more she wanted for something to happen. Otherwise the hours spent quiet and alone had her thinking of how empty the town was, a shell of its mining glory, and in turn, how she’d been but a shell of herself when here last. Time had passed from the spring, but the shroud of memories still coated the town, echoing sounds of how she’d cried herself ill for days on end. Her sharp rejections of food on offer, knowing she’d only retch it out the next time the surge of grief overtook her and there too little food available to waste it on that. The stabbing pain that it kept in her head and heart, never easing, doubled down when tears arose anew with Abigial, pragmatic and caring, fussing at her with the insistence it weren’t no fuss. That it were a break from watching John and maybe they could go get some fresh brewed coffee from Pearson come morning if she felt up to it.

Midnight came in the present, bringing with it an end to the storm; moonlight cast its beautiful sheen on the fresh, untouched cloak of snow. Her heart hurt, she admitted that to herself alone, thinking of how she’d once admired its beauty in her relative innocence, alongside a man that later would die as it stained red where his body fell. Found herself wanting for something or someone to share it with, to help her see again the beauty inherent in the winter, not the loss that stained it with bloody memories. Idly, she wondered if Arthur were the sort to call it pretty or grouse at the cold of it; he weren’t poetic, so probably the latter, but he weren’t there to tell her and it distracted her a few minutes, at least, to toy with the thought of it.

The heaviness of sleep did not drag at her despite the hour, staved off by the knowledge that the nightmares she’d left up on this mountain would find her again if she tried. Hard to sit here, recollecting them while awake and able to reason them off back into the closeted past; couldn’t bear the idea of reliving them within the lines of a dream, so she left John to sleep and kept up the second watch through the early hours of the morning. Ate a few dry biscuits when her stomach growled for food, added a few logs to the fire when the chill tried to creep back in, and brewed a bit of coffee with freshly melted snow to keep from being too idle. Thought, mostly, to where they were, how close it was to where her world fell apart and felt that morbid need to see what’d become of it, to see if maybe she’d dreamt up the fire, that maybe she had something still to ride back to; a fool’s hope, but one that she couldn’t ignore the longer that it danced at the edge of her thoughts.

Dawn crept on her as she turned the idea over in her head, stoked the fire with fresh wood; it shadowed her as she set a second pot of coffee to boil and brew near the coals of the fireplace. Sadie checked her duster and boots, dried and warm by the steady heat through the night, and donned them, added gloves, her hat. Realized then that she’d made her decision and braced herself to step outside. Quinn, one of the ranch hands, came out of their cabin when she pounded on the door; she had him take on the rest of the watch so she could saddle up her mare and see what, if any, awaited at her home.

-

Zeus, named for the smug bastard of a god, had adapted quick to Sadie in their few days together and stood patient, or lazy as her namesake, as she twice checked the tack before mounting up. Bribed ahead of time with an oat cake, she didn’t mind being ridden out in the fresh snow much as she hadn’t minded being ridden in the driving rain. Seemed a hard thing, upsetting this horse, and Sadie took that as a blessing and a sound investment after months of watching how the gang had soothed and eased their horses amid gunfire and frayed nerves.

This high up and the hour early, the mountain was quiet but for the creak of snow made crisp by cooler air on the wet layers, crunching underneath each hoof that Zeus set down. Sadie hardly heard it, her heart beating loud in her ears and trying to demand her breathing keep up to its frantic pace. She swallowed, a nausea stirred up as she took the final turn on the trail, past the tree with the cross notched scar in its bark, the final waymarker of the trail they’d made their first time up.

Then, for the first time in half a year, she braced herself and set her eyes on Adler Ranch.

Sadie licked her lips, mouth dry, as she slowed Zeus to stand just beyond the rough arch they’d spent the better part of a week hauling into place, the last of their fencing done to mark the boundaries of their land. She laughed, the faintest echo of the sound, when she recalled Jake complaining of a splinter biting into half the length of his thumb. Took an hour of soaking it in hot water with sodium bicarbonate to loosen it, ease it out, and him trying hard not to fuss at her joking it better to just cut off the thumb and be done with it.

She looked over the buildings that they had painstakingly built together, the barn’s door hanging open still from that night, the shed half burned, and the house... Sadie looked at the charred timbers that were the remains of her house, telling her all she needed to know that this life. This ranch? It were over.

Memories assailed her regardless, from her days spent working hard with the livestock, to Jake admitting he had some money trouble and had been helped by a silent stranger in sorting it out. Remembered hunting deer and rabbit plenty, even the night she chased off the screaming mountain lion by shouting at it, Jake turned white as flour at her swearing she’d beat the creature to death with her bare hands it if tried crossing either of them. Laughing and loving together; tender moments enjoyed in the nights, when they were both tired from the satisfaction of work and could turn their words to dreams, plans that he’d been better at forming and her seeing them through.

Sadie squeezed her knees gently, loosened the reins to cross under the arch, Zeus stepping through the snow towards the ashen remains of her old life. She dismounted, boots heavy on the steps. Her hands were shaking and she clenched them into fists to still the surging anxieties. Her breath clouded the air, huffs as she choked back the urge to cry, to sob as she had when the grief was raw, newly cleaved through her soul, worked to be stronger here in the face of it. Slowly she sunk to her knees, sat back in the charred remains marred by snow, and she stared without seeing. The memories were chased from her thoughts, her mind losing its connection to what this place had been to her and to herself as she were now, many months and murders later.

Hollow.

That’s what it felt, to see the ruin and know that it weren’t coming back, that this time were gone and she had to leave off it. Give it peace so she could, maybe, find her own. The sadness of it offset her anger, took its protective embrace and left her with nothing but the arms she wrapped around her knees as she tried to process something to feel here.

Only thing that came clear as she waited some hours for this revelation to not come, though, were that she belonged here no more.

-

Mid-morning came with sun risen clear and melting the new snow, but no sign of Sadie; that kept him from having the hands tether up the horses and start south again. Sure, John wanted to leave Colter, and leave behind the ache of his scars, the shadows of wolves that chased him through his sleep, but he refused to leave without her. Had her kit packed up, swore a blue streak when he found her bedding never unrolled nor used when she failed to wake him for his watch; he had the boys ready to mount up, ready to tether the line, but had them hold off and drink coffee instead while they waited for her to come back.

He considered, brief, riding north to follow her tracks before they melted away, but last time he’d done that ended up with him being intimate with a pack of wolves in all the wrong ways and so he held back and drank the coffee she’d brewed up before heading out. Quinn swore she’d be back, or at least swore that she’d said as much to him, so all they could do was give her time; she’d lived here before, she’d be able to handle herself fine – is what he told himself frequently as he found the bottom of the coffee pot and its bitter grounds.

John rode slow up and down the length of Colter on his Appaloosa, stolen from Emerald Ranch during the flight west, off the ridge and anywhere that wasn’t infested with Pinkertons; hadn’t named him yet, not sure if he’d be better selling him once they were back in Valentine. They had a wagon, he and Abigail, liberated from a quiet homestead, and that served them for now, and the horse’d fetch good money at auction, even without papers. What he had from the satchel, it were a lot, but he had to mind Jack too. Make sure the kid ate, same as his parents, and make sure they were all good, which was why he’d taken this easy job and watched it spiral into a mess and hell, maybe he ought to take the risk and ride out, see where she’d gone.

Then it became moot as Sadie rode back in from the north, her mare steady and sure in following the trail back, her rider looking the same sort of distant she had the night before. She blinked when she saw him, saw the ranch hands milled over near the old barn, and she shook her head. “Took a look around, ain’t no rustlers hid out here,” she said, slowing Zeus to a stop next to him. Shadows traced her eyes and she looked tired, but the sort of tired what couldn’t sleep. He knew it well enough, spent days at a time like that when he’d been on the mend and running from the nightmares of it, knew it’d spoil the day if it were talked about, so he left it, turned it to something else.

Kept off the anger, the exasperation of being left to sleep instead of taking on the watch, but decided it best to start there at least. “Sadie, I don’t want reasons or nothing,” he grumped, gesturing to the boys to put the horses on the line and ready to head out, “but, how’s it you expect me to prove I ain’t no spring flower when you won’t even wake me to take the damn watch?”

The wry smile she gave seemed a puppeted expression, a token of what was expected here, but there was an appreciation in the way she nodded her head, a thank you to him not prying. “Maybe that was the test, Marston,” she intonated, reached out and thumped the side of her fist on his arm. “Ain’t much of a tough guy if you can’t keep your own schedule.”

John shook his head in disbelief and mock incredulity, looked over to the boys. “What the hell are you three waiting on?” he called, reining his horse about. “The lady’s back and we got some horses to get to auction!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P.S. Sadie's horse in the epilogue is a stallion named Hera and I couldn't resist giving her a mare named Zeus. Plus, Sadie's temper suits both of those Grecian gods a little too well.


	22. Chapter IX: Valentine - 07: Empty Soul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Long-awaited, this return to Valentine, but it's not in the best spirits that Sadie reunites with Arthur. Or the best weather.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

Two days overdue by the time Sadie rode back into Valentine, late in the night and soaked to the bone. Taking the upper pass worked out better than following the beck; it’d snowed there, no rain underneath, so the horses could move without the constant threat of misstep on hidden ice. Kept the pace slow, though, with the weight of the snow and the depth of it costing a couple hours of progress each day. Trail were too clogged up to draw out opportunistic thieves, at least, so it went quiet all the way down back towards the Dakota and the air felt fresher, wakeful in the sun while it lasted, but she’d seen the slow trod of the storm clouds as they descended, knew they might still catch trouble from it.

They did.

They caught up with the rain on the south end of the mountain and paced it the rest of the way, making a miserable end to a trip she couldn’t quite figure on if she liked or hated. Went by without firing a shot, despite her itching for an O’Driscoll to call challenge at them. Lost neither ranch hand nor horses to the weather, despite its best attempts to make treacherous the route. Sealed herself a tidy payment, one hundred dollars, as the string of horses were led into the auction grounds, despite not having the sense of earned a dollar of it.

“Christ, it’s late,” John muttered with a yawn as they turned their horses to head out, he’d split out of town to where Abigail and Jack were camped and she had full intent to return to the boarding room and take up one of those twice-weekly baths, see if she could use it to chase the rain’s chill from her.

Sadie put her focus to staying in the saddle as they rode; hadn’t slept more than a few winks since Colter and her ill-advised trip home, time instead spent struggling to pull herself out of the emotional void that its conflicting stimuli rendered her to. Made the motions of living all the same, but rode more like some mechanical wonder than an experienced rancher; there’d been a couple times when she dozed off in the saddle, only to start awake minutes later with reins near fallen from her hands, balance skewed to the side before she caught herself.

John noticed and rode next to her the last few miles, steadied her with a hand to her shoulder more than a few times when she’d started to slip towards sleep, but learned quick that she’d snap, brief and brutal, if he suggested they stop. All she’d wanted to do was get the job over with and that meant riding through the rain, half freezing under it when the sun went down, and he seemed to understand that it weren’t the money driving her no more. Weren’t more than wanting to be done with the trek, done with Colter, and done with what she’d seen of her home.

“Sadie.”

The repetition of her name pulled her from the bleary emptiness and she looked at John, saw the shade of concern run itself from him when her focus came back. “What?”

He resettled his weight in the saddle, glanced over the tracks to the south east – probably the direction he meant to head. “I asked,” repeated, though she’d missed it the first time, “if there was some way to get hold of you.” The rain continued to patter down around them, both soaked through, but he ignored it and she endured it, both chased beyond caring by exhaustion. “Y’know, if there’s other work. And Abigail, well. I’d put money on her wanting to know how you’re holding up.”

Right then? Not well; the dry reflection came up in her mind to counter the soaked exterior. She shook her head. “Ain’t sticking long in Valentine,” she said, and meant it. Riding out with John and doing a job, it’d felt good until the snow started, but now she were thinking the town made them sitting ducks and with the auctions done in a week or less, well. Best to move on before any eyes stuck on them, same as the original plan hatched on the train ride in. “You worry about your wife and life, John Marston,” she told him, near as ordered him, though she cut it with a shallow, tired smile. “I’ll find y’all some time, when things ain’t so raw.”

“Alright.”

Odd and awkward it felt, but she shook his hand all the same, told him to ride careful, pass her greetings to Abigail and the boy. Then she made sure he rode out, waited until the rain absorbed his shadow in the night before she turned Zeus about and headed for the town stables. Stiff from the cold, she dismounted and pulled free her saddlebags and bedroll, then paid a week’s board in advance. All but a meal for herself done, and she’d managed some biscuits about an hour out of Valentine, so she trudged her way back to the general store and up the side stairs, everything about her wet and heavy.

Ready to sleep, if her mind’d let her.

Ready to see how Arthur fared without her there to keep him abed.

Ready to hear him yell at her again about John if he felt the need to.

She’d missed the rough tenor of his voice, the slow and steady way he spoke a contrast to the lanky energy Marston mustered up. Missed, too, having someone she could talk frank with about the past few weeks, not stepping around glass and eggshells to keep John from learning too much too soon, making harder on him to grieve and be done with it.

The ache of her side, at least, weren’t new nor flaring; she’d stop in with the doctor tomorrow or the day next to have the threads cut free, leave the gunshot a scarred memory. Small fortunes, worth counting in the way she felt right then.

Took the final steps with too loud the tread of her boots, each barely lifted clear of each stair before she tripped to the next, and readied herself to fumble with the key, the lock, as quiet as she could to keep from disturbing Arthur. Expected trouble with it, after the effort of walking in a straight line up the stairs proved impossible, but the door swung open as she reached for the handle; her hand itched to grab a gun, faint alarm sounding, but it were only Arthur that stood there, looking at her, then checking beyond her to the dark. Must’ve heard her come up and opened it, made sure she weren’t trouble.

Sadie stepped in around him, let him close the door behind her. “Why ain’t you asleep?” she asked.

“Done plenty of that while you was away,” he said, gruff. There carried a strength in his voice she hadn’t heard since before hell broke loose and she stopped a moment, absorbing the sound and the unexpected, sudden relief that filled the abyss that’d been her heart these past few days. She’d missed that, same as she’d missed his voice, but she didn’t put it to words. “Why’s you riding in three days late?” he pressed, looking her over. Thought she saw concern, but he had his hat drawn low, and she couldn’t put the effort forward to discern it; tried, but it were harder than herding cats to get her thoughts to focus right then.

Sadie shrugged her saddlebags to the ground and tossed the bedroll down atop them, groaning as she realized she’d have to dry it out before she could rest proper. “Hit some bad weather up in the pass,” she said. “I’ll regale you with all them fun details when I’ve warmed up some.” Pulled off her hat, sodden and sad, and her duster near fell from her grasp with the weight of the water on it. They were too easy to drop as she walked towards the small wood stove in the room, stoked faint and promising heat she ain’t felt in a few days. She went to it, a moth to the flame and eager to burn up.

There were two chairs, all told, to the room and Arthur pulled both over, in the action showing surety of step, not stopping to cough or choke and she kept that relief, held to it before it could slip. Stuffed it where she couldn’t get other feelings to settle, something to keep. “Sit,” he said. “You’re damn soaked.”

Laughter escaped her, more sardonic than sincere, but better than the bitter silence she’d been sporting since Colter. “Been riding in snow, sleet, and rain,” she said, almost regretting that her jacket lay on the floor by the door. Air didn’t seem to have the warmth to match the stove and she’d started shivering, tried to suppress it as she glanced to her duster. Soaked it were, but the idea of its warmth, a concept, appealed to her right then. Sadie ignored the chair and stepped closer to the iron stove, wanted to lay on it if that’d get the shuddering chill to let up. Some distant part of her mind considered picking an ember right out of the fire, reasoned that with as cold as her hands were, it’d offset the heat and she’d walk away without a burn. A fool thought, but a warm one and seemed worth the risk.

She heard him step away, worked at something she couldn’t see, unable to draw her eyes from the glow of the grate. When she managed to glance back, Arthur was standing not two feet behind her, gaze resolutely turned to the wall, with the blanket off the bed held spread out between his hands to curtain her from view. “You ought get out of them clothes,” he said. “We don’t got time for you to catch cold.”

“Too late,” she said airily, a reference to her temperature and not her health, but its humour lost to the harsh frown that pulled at his lips. The logic of his statement held truth, much as she could muster sense against the tired and the cold, so she reluctantly abandoned her vigil by the stove to straighten up. Fingers stiff and shaking made it hard to strip out of her clothes, feet didn’t want to cooperate at toeing off the boots, but she managed it and kicked the mess aside. Felt the blanket press down over her shoulders, foisted on her by Arthur, who’d kept his gaze averted. Thin and scratchy, the wool were cool from disuse, but would do better than rain-slick garments; she pulled it about herself, tucked it under her arms like some fancy fool’s Parisian dress. Then, finally, she allowed herself to sink into the chair, nudging it closest to the stove as she could without catching fire.

“Thanks,” offered as a quick gesture, her hands stretched out for the heat. Her braid hung heavy down her back, leaving a trail of rainwater now and again that she tried to ignore.

Arthur grunted and left her there, picking her duster and hat off the ground, hanging them over the second chair to dry near the fire. Same treatment he gave the rest of her things, straightforward and efficient, before he left the room a few minutes; heard him take the stairs down at a brisk pace, thought of how she’d not heard that for months, then some talking. She kept shivering in the chair, leaned forward close as she could, too tired to warm up and too cold to sleep.

Door opened again, then shut with the lock latched; Arthur come back with two more blankets in his arms, one he put on the bed for now, the second he shook out to put over her shoulders. He paused, then reached for her braid, pulled it up and over the blanket so it’d stop trickling water against her skin and soak into the blanket instead. Left her to the stove then, moved wide around to lean up on the wardrobe with his arms crossed, gaze intense as he looked her over. Weren’t a predatory look, but a careful one; got the sense he wanted to make sure she weren’t doing poorly.

“Snow’s started up in the mountains,” she said after a bit, rubbing her hands along her arms to chase off the gooseflesh. Tried to get some sense about her, get some things said what’d settle them back on track after a week apart. “Winter ain’t far. How’s the cough?” Unspoken to it, the question of if they was safe to head south without sending him back to how he’d been before. Fact he’d just done the stairs without the cough running him ragged gave her the idea they might be good to head out, get away from Valentine.

“Been fine,” were his gruff response. “Hardly come up.” Like as not, it sure had; she’d learned some tells about him and the rush he had to put others at ease were a clear one. Still, he sounded better and she kept that, packed it in with the relief she’d felt at seeing him, left it in the emptiness.

Sadie nodded. “I was thinking southeast, for now,” she said, staring at the grate of the stove, tempted to pull it open and hope the heat’d spill out further. “Down near Rhodes, where it ain’t so cold. Might get past the year without snow, that far south. It’d be good for your lungs, long as we keep from the shores of Flat Iron where the air gets so damn heavy.”

Arthur didn’t kick in a response just then, stood off to the side with his weight leaned on the wardrobe, looking to the stove much as she had. Rhodes were a loaded gun, no doubt, but the whole damn Commonwealth of West Elizabeth ain’t much better after what Dutch dragged them all through. The idea to get further, headed north or south, meant passing army checkpoints one way, crossing Blackwater’s law-choked territory the other. That kept them pinned under the line of the mountains and their options limited.

“Talked with the sheriff here, week before last,” she added, curling tight on the chair. Seemed the cold soaked in her bones weren’t ready to let go yet. “Rhodes got itself a new sheriff and there’re state funds in play for them that help clean up the lawless mess we left there. Might be able to secure work that way.” The idea of something to keep her busy what sat on the brighter side of legal had caught her attention, to help with money beyond that tainted recompense they had.

“You don’t got to bear the sin of what we all done there,” he said with a shake of his head.

“Someone ought,” she said with a shrug, a shudder.

-

They argued over it a spell, his sore recollection making him angry; his frustration pushed awake memories that he’d no want to deal on. Points that Sadie made were sensible and could be for all he cared, but the stretch what Scarlett Meadows covered marked the point when they stopped doing more than running and gunning, in his measure. Started being the killers, the looters, the degenerates that Dutch always taught him, taught them all, to not be. Arthur rubbed at the furrow of his brow, sighed. “You ain’t going to be changed on this?”

Sadie shook her head. “It’s warmer there,” she said again, all the while shivering under two blankets and before the fire. Now and again her words’d stutter, tripped by it, but she’d make herself keep on speaking like it weren’t nothing. Part of why his temper were frayed, distracted by the thought she’d gone too far again, might come ill from this so-called easy ride with Marston. Hoped, somewhere, that John weren’t in the same rough shape. Knew now he should’ve ridden with her. That he ought have ridden out to make sure they were come back safe, damnit. Relieved, sure, that she’d made it back, overdue or not, and Arthur kept doing his best not to take those regrets and fears out on her.

“Safer,” she’d gone on saying, “and stable, if this new sheriff’s half of what the law here said. Ain’t putting up with the raiders no more, started putting out bounties on ‘em. Should be safe to hole up outside the town somewhere. Bet there’re places with rooms to let, where we don’t need do nothing but get through to spring.”

“I ain’t good at idle,” he warned her, startled her by the edge to each word. “There ain’t no way I’ll sit through a season doing jackshit.” Arthur hardly needed to prove that; ledger in camp spoke to how he’d ride out at dawn, come back few days later with fresh game, new scores. Hosea done his best to impart on him the idea that the difference between an outlaw and the real degenerates was the work ethic, to be helping others more than himself. Dutch built on that, relied on him to keep things smooth, supplied. This month, almost full now, with nothing to be done but rest and recover were an anomaly he weren’t sure he could survive a winter doing.

Sadie frowned, pressed the heels of her hands to her temples like something back there were fighting her, hurting her, pushing her. “You ever tire of running, all the damn time?” One of them rhetorical questions and he didn’t bother with an answer, let her run the course of what she’d meant to say. “I am tired, right now, Arthur. Damn tired.”

“Been doing it twenty years, Sadie,” he informed her, arms crossed. “It’s what I know.”

“I ain’t having this conversation, Arthur.” Her eyes were closed, the shadows under them clear despite the stove’s low light, and she’d moved her hands to her knees, gripping them tight through the blankets. “I’m too damned tired to be arguing it.”

The way his name came out, sharp and warning, didn’t put a stop to him; something were going on here and the words tossed back and forth, they weren’t lined up in meaning. Easier that it were to get riled up with her, shove back when she pushed, and after a week without her, and he were real tempted, but he tried for a middle ground to see what all were going on. “What the hell d’you expect me to say?” he growled. “You ride in, two days late, and start talking like we got to high tail it out of here. Then tell me you ain’t keen on running again. We was set here for the fall auctions, they ain’t done for a week. What the hell changed?”

“Nothing,” she said, bent forward and freeing a hand from her knee. Sadie clutched at her forehead like it were splitting open and her fingers were the only things to stop it. “Nothing changed, I just- Tired. Can’t think without- Shit.” The shivering turned worse, taking on a full on shaking as she kept pressing at her head.

“Then sleep,” he said. Arthur didn’t let his tone go soft; the way she acted had him worried, had him pushing to see when she’d snap, get her fire back. “We got time to argue this come morning.”

“I _can’t_ ,” she gritted out through clenched teeth. “I ain’t slept since-“ The way she bowed over, the shuddering of her shoulders, he come to realize weren’t cold alone. Something’d gotten to her out there, because he ain’t seen her cry since the Overlook, excepting that bit of spilled moonshine and ain’t no one what done that sort of thing walked away dry eyed. And here she were, half frozen and exhausted, trying to hide the fact tears were falling under the cover of her hand.

Shit.

Arthur pushed off the wardrobe, tempted to leave her to it same as he had left her to sort through the aftermath of killing them last O’Driscoll boys, but she’d asked him to give her space then. Told him to head off, let her clear her head. Here, she ain’t even acknowledged more than she were tired and cold. Worry cast its net over him quick, done a quick number with the idea he ought find Marston and drag him back, threaten beat him for the details about what’d gone on out there, but it weren’t right. Not yet, at least. Instead, he approached slow, crouched down and rested his elbows on his knees, looked over to her without trying to look her in the eyes. “What’s gone on, Sadie?” he asked. Peeled away some of the sharpness of his tone, put a hand awkwardly over the one she kept clasped on her knee, see what it was she needed right then.

Trembling breathing took over the air, served to fill the sound for a time as she scraped bits of herself from god-knew-where, and he done his best to ignore the small, choked sobs that sounded some few times before she licked her lips and started talking, but ain’t moved her head to look at him. “Weren’t nowhere to go,” she managed, nails dug tight into the roots of her hair. “Snow kept falling, ice in the passes; would’ve had to put them horses down if they broke leg making the trek.” Slower breathing as words came together, finding their way out the twisted mess what’d triggered this. “We holed up in Colter a night, figured it’d be fine.” She kept stumbling on the words, cold or hurting, and he weren’t sure what he ought be saying or doing.

Headed back to Colter, well, that’d be hell on any of them, but John’d been hurt real bad there and Sadie... Shit. Up that way was where it all started going sour for her. Wouldn’t’ve been no sweet paradise for either of them. Why the hell they’d pick Colter if there was anything but available? Answer had to be there weren’t options what worked otherwise. He let out a slow, quiet mutter of a curse.

“Ain’t slept there,” she said. Stopped to haul in some breaths, build up them walls what kept her together, but seemed they kept crumbling around her. “That close-“ Shake of her head as the words caught thick in her throat.

The idea of what she done dawned on him and it weren’t one he liked. Colter lay too damn close to her home, or what’d been home, and he knew enough about her to see she weren’t like to leave that well enough alone. Had to prove, to herself maybe, something by going there.

“I had to see it.” Sadie dropped her hand, head tilted back as she stared up to the ceiling, searched for something what’d salve the hurt. “Make sure it weren’t some nightmare.” Her hand moved to pull the blanket tighter around her, pressed it up against her chest. “There weren’t no house, no grave. Nothing. S’what I saw, all I felt... nothing. Three years of work, the life of my husband, and I couldn’t figure what I ought to feel.”

The whiteness of her knuckles, hard to make out with how she kept shaking, fed the worry gnawing at him, pushed down the strike of anger at how she’d found no grave marker. Dutch and Hosea, they’d sent someone back to do it, only- Shit, he’d no recollection who, but’d give them real hurting if he figured out who didn’t put a marker up for her husband. His grip on her hand tightened and he had to mind himself not to crush her fingers.

“Since then, nothing.” The tone of her voice had gone hollow, like she couldn’t understand it. “Ain’t slept, ain’t felt a thing. I am _so tired_ , Arthur. I can’t think no more. Can’t make no sense of things.” Tears were falling, otherwise silent, and tracing down her face, unchecked; frustration and sorrow, triggered by exhaustion’d be his guess. “Only reason I ate or drank was Marston kept pushing it at me.” This with a sharpness, like she’d tried to laugh at the idea and it tripped up, never made the full sound. “Like Abigail done, back then... Never took no for an answer. Stubborn lot.”

Arthur had no soothing words, turns of phrase to help here; weren’t the most effusive of feeling folk at the best of times, so instead he reached for her other hand, tried to tug her up off the chair as he stood up. “C’mon,” said, voice rough. “You ought to get warmed up, maybe that’ll get you to resting.”

Felt like he’d pulled the strings on a puppet, the way she stood and let him turn them, so she was closest to the fire, facing the stove. Put his hands on her arms as he stood behind her, rubbed up and down them to get some heat in her limbs, but all she done were wrap her arms about her stomach, shoulders slumped and trembling. “First thing I felt,” she’d continued saying, voice weak, “were relief. Thought it’d be for Jake not having to face all these same things, that he’d been spared running and killing and all that. But it weren’t.” Struggling to get the words out, unsteady on her feet, he ended up holding her there with his hands on her arms. “I felt relief, seeing you up and about, no fever hounding your eyes.”

Guilt; he recognized that in her words, in how she grasped for a measure of what she’d expected of herself and come up empty. Surviving what she done left a brand on the soul that’d never full heal, but the burn always ran deeper when others died in the effort. He knew it intimate, too long the survivor of what killed too many others. Moving on ran in his blood, but weren’t so easy on others. Suppose Sadie here, she struggled on both them counts. She lived while her life died, and then she’d sorted it, moved on and now couldn’t figure on why or how she couldn’t feel the same grief of before.

“Sadie, you don’t mean half of what you’re saying,” Arthur cut in, gave her arms a squeeze to break her out of the loop of thoughts she’d caught herself in. Running days on end without sleep, it twisted the mind and made it easy to put words to concepts what ought be silent. He’d seen a man gone without sleep three days shoot himself in the foot to make sure his gun was loaded and himself? Well, he’d done plenty fool things in the absence of rest. “We’ve got to get you sleeping. Finish talking about this in the morning.”

Futility, frustration; they worked in concert and shattered her last reserve. “Don’t you hear, Arthur?” she asked, voice breaking. “I _can’t_. I been trying and I’m so damn tired, but it ain’t coming.” He near lost his hold on her when her knees gave up on standing. Had to move his arms full around her, pulling her back up against him, and even that were to lower them both to the floor as Sadie crumpled in on herself, hand covering her eyes.

Arthur let himself sit on the ground, stretched his legs to either side of her and pulled her back up against him, knees bent just enough to seem like he full had her, weren’t about to let her go. Didn’t feel right, the idea of leaving her to deal with exhaustion and what scars lingered inside her mind, so he held on her tighter than he should’ve, maybe. Felt that maybe it was okay if he tried to hold her, tried to talk her through it, no matter how much a fool he could be when trying to ease another. “What’s it you see when you close them eyes of yours?” he asked careful, knowing sometimes the hollow feeling she spoke of were just a way the mind shuts out nightmares, traumas that ain’t been dealt, and talking on it could make it worse just as much as it could make it better.

Sadie breathed, shallow and slow, for a time after he asked it; seemed she put thought to it, even as she drew her legs and arms further in towards herself. That left him with someone small and hurting, held in the protective embrace he offered. Weren’t much more holding her together, right then, so he let his arms help keep her there and he waited. “I see him,” she said, barely a whisper. “I see my Jake, hale and hearty. The ranch fine, untouched by nothing foul.”

Clearer than a mountain stream is that this ain’t what kept her awake; the idea’d be soothing, or at least some comfort more than heartache at the start. “Yeah?” he murmured, quiet-like. “What else goes on there?”

“There ain’t anything more,” and in putting out those words, that realization – it triggered a shudder in her, a sob that she swallowed back thick. “I ain’t there. I don’t _fit_ there no more and I know I ain’t ever going to, but god it _hurts_.” She’d kept on shaking, now started rocking to one side and then the next; like a child what’s lost in the dark. Arthur held her tighter, rubbed his fingers careful against her forearms as he pulled them down and in against her chest. Where his arms could keep around her and let her leech some warmth, maybe even comfort to the idea that she weren’t alone here. “I miss him, Arthur,” came hoarsely, the source of her misery tied to what she had, to memories that couldn’t come to life. “I thought I was past it, but... I saw so much of him in what was left, but I ain’t seen me in it. There ain’t nothing that ties me to that life without him. I don’t regret none of what I done since, but... There ain’t nothing left without my Jake, not now that I killed the bastards what killed him. All’s I got now is hollow and I don’t got a way to find what’s left of me to fill it.”

Strange how that echoed in him; Arthur’d fought that venom each day since Dutch walked on him, but weren’t the first time he thought himself lost. Broken. Felt it when John abandoned them all for that year after Jack was born; when all he found of Eliza and Isaac were two graves lain out in uneven ground. He’d found anger and self-loathing and used it to build the shape of the man his enemies fought, but inside he knew that emptiness damn well and carried it still. He didn’t want her to be scarred the same way, Sadie being worth far more than the hollow she’d found in herself – that he could feel, plain as day, even see it.

“Shit, Sadie,” he said, trying to drum up a scoff, a huff that’d break through to her. “You got plenty that you ain’t seeing, what makes you a real force of nature without having no others about. Weren’t for Jake you went to gut Pearson, then shot up all them raiders. Weren’t for him you got us in and out of Sisika, nor what got you riding to save Abigail from that Milton bastard.”

“Couldn’t let Abigail lose John,” she argued, a fragile defence like she’d put herself into them shoes and tried to make right what’d wronged her, but weren’t ever that simple.

“Sure,” he agreed, soothed even. “But, all that aside, Sadie? There ain’t no way you dragged my corpse off the ridge for Jake. That you done for you and maybe I ain’t thanked you proper for it, but... turns out, I ain’t so sore over living.” He heaved a breath, paused to allow the rattle in his chest to idle down; running down them stair’s been rough and his cough wanted to come up, but he stubbornly swallowed it back. “Even if all them things you done before that were because of Jake, I ain’t going to believe you’d save an ugly bastard like me in his name. Seems like that’d be an insult to his memory and I know you ain’t the sort to tolerate that.”

That, finally, made her laugh, lit her brief with the fiery spirit he knew of her, and then it served to break down the last walls what’d been holding her up. Strong and sure Sadie Adler were most times, but she’d had a rough run for some weeks now and it all had to come down. Arthur’s usually came to brawling in a bar to get out the temper, and maybe that’d be her normal, but with days run without sleep, hardly eating, and now frozen to the core, she just broke down in his arms and let herself cry a long time.

The tense knot what’d tied tight in him frayed and loosened some, his concern ebbed some as he shifted her, let her legs rest over his thigh so that he could hold her against his chest and let her hide her face there long as she felt the need to. Held her long because he’d some sense that he wanted to, that he felt better for being there to give her this. Arthur ain’t set himself to much, never liked to bring many folk close to him, but Sadie were different and if sitting on the floor and holding her were gonna help, then hell’d freeze over before he’d give up on it.

Kept like that while Sadie shook with tears, almost an hour without words as he smoothed his hand down her back, soothed her best he could. When he heard her breathing start to even out and felt her shoulders start to slump with the first signs of sleep she’d yet shown, he shifted them both and got her standing again. Sadie shivered from the cold that still refused to leave her, but when he checked her eyes, lined with red from letting loose weeks of hurt, he saw her spirit back in them, tired and ready to rest.

“C’mon,” he said, guiding her towards the bed and the third blanket. “You’ll catch cold if you try and sleep on a damp bedroll, so don’t be arguing with me on this, Sadie Adler.”

“I’d be fine,” she said. Voice were dry and rough, carried her stubborn humour though. Sadie let him pull back the sheets, didn’t fight when he told her to climb in still wrapped in both blankets, even let her head fall to the pillow as he pulled up the sheets and shook out the third blanket to spread over her.

Arthur took some time sorting out the room, piled fresh wood in the stove to bring up the heat, then came over and sat himself up against the headboard, next to her on the mattress. “You warm up, get some sleep,” he said, straightening out the corner of the blanket. I’ll keep the fire hot and we can argue where we’re going come morning, a’right?”

The soft laugh reassured him, though the hand she stretched out from under the blankets were still too damn cold for comfort; she grabbed his wrist and seemed she didn’t want to quite let go, so he let her have that, even cleared his throat awkward-like and shifted to hold her hand like they had on the train, fingers interlaced to help spread the warmth of his skin against her cool, clammy hand. “Thank you, Arthur,” she managed to say before she yawned, the exhaustion finally come to meet with sleep that’d been running from her.

“Only for you, Sadie,” he said, that gruff layer back again to keep her at ease. Troubling bit were, Arthur started to understand it to be true. There were things he’d do only for Sadie Adler and he weren’t sure quite how right that could be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Put your hands up if you've ever gone 96+ hours without sleeping! /throws hand in the air
> 
> Please, never try that at home. Empty Soul and Sadie's reactions to insomnia drew on my own experiences with sleep deprivation. Funny story: I actually participated in a provincial pool tournament during one of my 96+ hours sleepless incidents and WELL. I still hear stories about what I did during that weekend and go "huh, that was me??" about that shit.
> 
> Y'all might see me doing some housekeeping and stuff around ASM, and posting a bonus piece to collect the additional scenes I've written that don't actually work with the narrative. Most of them are self-indulgent bits of fluff and I've got three ready to type up. I'll try to correlate where they go in the ASM timeline when I post them, for easy cross-reference, and I'll link them under a Series name (since there's also going to be a sequel piece to ASM).
> 
> These two chapters were a bit heavy and character-focused, but the plot progression picks up again next chapter and we're due for a location change shortly.
> 
> Thank you, forever and again, to everyone that comes by and reads ASM! The kudos, comments, bookmarks, and subscription stats make my heart feel bouyant and I appreciate every last one of them. This fic started as a therapeutic "fuck you" to Arthur's fate and turned into the first significant piece I've written since I basically gave up on writing. It feels good to be back in the habit.
> 
> Hearts, hugs, and stay warm! (It's -1C outside right now, but it'll get colder yet...)
> 
> \- Kichi @[KichiWhy](https://twitter.com/KichiWhy) (Twitter)
> 
> P.S. Companion Piece: [Keeping Warm](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27625381/chapters/67931986)  
> (shameless smutiness for John and Abigail)


	23. Chapter IX: Valentine - 08: Discouraged Folk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arthur utilizes a 'brilliant' method of disguise (aka: he shaves) and Sadie just can't deal with how he does it. Once they finally hit Rhodes, however, she relies on Arthur's contact, a discouraged man, to secure them someplace safe where he can continue to recover.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

Turned out their argument on which direction to take had to wait; after too long spent in exhaustion, hunger, and chilled to the core, Sadie came down with a burning fever and cough for three days. That served to push and prod worry through Arthur, solace alone found in the fact that she spent most of the time sleeping. After that first night, riding in late and haunted, he’d been concerned she’d have trouble getting back the habit of it, but her ill turn in health gave that, for all it tried to take from them. Doctor Calloway, come by to pull the stitches and call her injury but a scarred memory when Arthur told him of her being ill, confirmed that she’d be over the fever with bedrest and plenty of water. This triggered griping from her squeezed into the sparse moments of lucidity she had, claiming that she were fine and it were Arthur what needed to rest and recover. They both ignored her claims and the doctor left Arthur with instructions and tinctures that’d ease her throat, help her sleep.

When she finally woke with colour back to her skin and the familiar rasp of her voice? Then was when they disputed some whether Rhodes were the route to take. Three days spent pondering while keeping an eye on her fever, making sure she weren’t slipped away from him, ain’t given Arthur much in the way of points to refute hers, so the discourse didn’t last more than a few minutes of him grudgingly agreeing that maybe Rhodes would be fine, but only because the snow kept them from going north, over the mountains and, shit, well any other direction had too much law infested in it to be safe. Sadie, well, she took that as her victory and maybe as thanks to what he done to help her through that rough patch, she didn’t lord it over him.

They held off heading out for the full week, ensuring that the both of them were fit to make any trek, before a morning dawned with the first bites of frost dusting the muddied track of main street what urged them to move before winter settled in. They spent the time mostly in the room, where they talked more about where they’d head in Rhodes over than what’d happened to Sadie up on that mountain; didn’t much seem a need to, once Sadie were up and about, showing near to no worse from the wear. Added a few more shadows under her eyes and, to a fool what might mention it, a couple thin lines to her face, but she’d made it out alive and with her mind intact, and enough of her heart to keep moving forward, he figured.

Arthur still didn’t like the idea of Rhodes but liked even less the idea of damn near every other direction they figured on. Bridge after bridge’d been burned in his wake for more than the past year; most of the western states posted bounties on his head that’d make the Blackwater job look cheap and West Elizabeth were about the only place left, barring riding into the ocean, that he might stay hid so long as they stayed out of sight and kept away from trouble. That were the idea, at least; challenge’d be keeping to that idea when it seemed everything they done so far strayed off the intent at the first bit of a breeze.

“No trains, no stage,” Sadie was saying as she packed away the last of her gear into her saddlebags. Couple of sniffles still plagued at her and she rubbed the tip of her nose, irritated with the illness’s lingering trace.

Arthur had to chuckle at that, the words and the petulant way she treated her symptoms both. “You angling to see what other kinds of trouble we can find?” he asked, shrugging his jacket into place over his shoulders. His own saddlebags, nondescript and packed secure, leaned up against his boots.

“Riding’s safer,” she shot back, aimed for matter of fact in her tone and sneezed halfway through it. She muttered to it, then continued on like it weren’t nothing. “And even if it ain’t, at least we’ll see trouble coming in time to do something about it.” That’d put control back in their hands when it come to reaction and direction; gave her a firm point there that he’d not argue. There came a hesitation as she tightened the last strap closed, her eyes watching him more than the work. “You think you’ll last horseback?”

“I’m fine.” Stilted and stiff were the words, each meant as much to convince himself as much as her. Truth told, he ain’t done more than walk the main street, use the stairs up to their room to get some capacity back to his lungs. When Sadie’d come back, soaked and cold, that’d been the first time he managed them stairs at more than a walk without passing out from coughing. He’d done it, worried more for her than his fool lungs, and they’d burned right through the night and day next in recompense.

Chased and bothered still by what happened in Colter maybe, Sadie didn’t challenge him on it; same as him, she wanted to get out, to somewhere safer and hoped that Rhodes could deliver.

They were riding by midday, mares pulled from the stables and some final supplies grabbed at the general store when Sadie turned in the room’s key. Sun burned away the frost of the morning and they encountered only a few folks outside of Valentine. He didn’t bother calling out to those they did, wanted to leave less of an impression to recall just in case folk came by, asking about them.

Arthur felt better, being back in the saddle; riding were easy and familiar, two things he’d been short on since the Hollow and needed to stock. Riding the new mare only buoyed him further, almost like he finally had a fresh start after losing Buell on the ridge, being bedbound for weeks. He soaked that feeling in same as he did the warm afternoon sun of autumn, hat perched back on his head so he could make the most of the light. Hardly noticed when Sadie pulled up alongside him on her mare – Zeus, she’d called her; something about the horse being stubborn as bull and hard to shake, rather like the Greek god. He grunted a greeting of sorts at her, face still turned towards the sun, relaxed for the first time in a month.

“You had a beard last time we came through Rhodes,” she remarked, looking to the month-and-more’s scruffy growth that held tight to the length of his chin, clinging hungrily about his mouth like eating were meant for it and not him.

Arthur relented on his enjoyment of the weather, lowered his hat to shade his eyes, and glanced at her. “Yeah, suppose I did,” he agreed, scratching at the beard. “Stopped shaving when I was shot up, didn’t go back to it until we was up near Butcher’s Creek.” Hadn’t like the weight of it up there; often he’d felt smothered by it when his coughing caught up in his chest, so he’d sheered it off a couple times up there before his energy fell from grace and he couldn’t muster the strength to care about it no more. “Why? You think it don’t make me look dignified?” This he asked with a crooked smile cast her way, the riding out and warm weather a boon on his mood.

Sadie laughed and rolled her eyes at his cheeky reaction, more herself again with Valentine and Colter faded behind them. “I’m thinking notoriety, Mr. Morgan,” she said. “No point waltzing in and looking same as you did on them wanted posters pasted up everywhere.”

That he doubted a risk, what with his being down a chunk of the weight and muscle that’d filled him out, made him seem more menace than man. His profile’d fallen to a shadow of the brute he’d been before; Valentine’d got him on his feet again, but hale he were not. “Suppose you’re right,” he allowed, angled more to keeping hid over whether a beard’d get him recognized.

Arthur pulled his knife clear of its sheath – the new one she’d picked up when they first got into Valentine – and, looping the reins about one hand, took to crudely shaving the beard off. The act turned out more like cutting into the growth, coming mightily close to taking flesh with it, but weren’t the first time he trimmed up on horseback, hardly like to be the last. Ain’t ever been the wisest thing he done, but he never claimed to be wise. Usually pushed the opposite idea when the topic come up.

“Arthur Morgan, you are an animal!” she chided, frowning at him to keep from laughing. This he saw by the way that her mouth twitched up at the corner in spite of her attempts to scowl at him, something he’d come to know about her this past while, a tell that’d be her end if they faced off in poker. “It’s no wonder you got a scar like that-“ a gesture to the old one that dragged over his chin “- if that’s how you think shaving ought be done!”

Scraping the blade careful along his jaw cleared out the roughest patches and he lowered the knife, rested the hand on the saddle horn. Arthur chuckled and took a moment to finger the scar, visible again in the absence of the beard. “This thing? Nah. That was from a damn fool what brought a knife to a gun fight.”

“The damn fool being you?” she hazarded. Hard to tell if she meant it as a joke, but he’d been enjoying the easy day and took it as jest to keep things relaxed.

Arthur looked askance at her, brow arched up questioningly. “You think I’m an ingrate or something?” he asked with a dismissive snort of a laugh. “I was the one with the damn gun, Sadie.”

The look she shot him bordered on disbelief, brow arched up in near perfect mirror of his mock incredulity. “Then how’s it you got the scar?” she asked. Damn well challenged him, in the way her mouth curled with a daring smile at the end there and, sure. He could take the bait here, why not. They were both due a bit of fun.

Mind that the details weren’t the most dignified; Arthur shot her a rueful grin and shrugged up his shoulder. “Ain’t no one ever said the knife didn’t get a cut in before the gun shot it,” he said, clear and plain as the sun in the sky. “I just made sure that it and the bastard what brought it weren’t around to do it more than once.”

Sadie looked at him, an odd sort of expression she dismissed with a sigh, a shake of her head like there were nothing she could do with him. “How’s it half your stories start with your ass getting kicked first?” she muttered as she nudged Zeus ahead, leaving him to finish up his primitive shaving.

Arthur chuckled and raised up the knife again, running his thumb along the line of his jaw to find the lingering patches of hair. “Point being, Mrs. Adler,” he said, mock formal and fool at the same time, “is that they don’t ever end that way.”

-

They were more than halfway to Rhodes when they made camp, pulling off the road and around a strand of trees so their fire’d draw less notice and leave them free to sleep without a watch. Arthur managed to bring down a rabbit with his revolver, hurting for his rifles something fierce as he skinned the bullet-beaten carcass, roasted the meat over the fire with a bit of thyme he’d found on the walk back. The weather even cooperated some, dipping cool in the night, but no rain to require tents or douse the fire throughout the night.

Late afternoon of the second day saw them entering Rhodes, sun starting to cast a molten glow about the world. It struck Sadie, immediate, how changed the town had become since she’d last seen it. Rhodes’d been her first real chance to get away from Pearson and camp after weeks of being confined within its perimeter, its expectations. It were also the first time she and Arthur done much of anything other than exchange stilted greetings; before then, he’d been careful around her, offering assistance and backing down when she’d spit insults at him and his lifestyle. She’d been hurting too much to do more than hurt them others, lashing out and getting no peace for it.

Back then, coming from camp, Rhodes had a sense of civilization and life. Plenty of folk about and plenty of fun to entice. Now, though, plenty of windows were boarded up and near half the population seemed gone. Some walls had the vestiges of red stains, bullet holes reminiscent of when the Grays shot Sean, near killed the others, and then been slaughtered in return.

Arthur rode quiet beside her, taking it in. “This some sort of ghost town now?” he asked, scratching his jawline. Had to itch, how he’d shaved off his beard on horseback like an idiot with a point to prove, but least it served the purpose of diminishing his profile. Looked something less menacing, this way. Scars were bare to the eye, but they were nothing to the ones along John’s jaw line, and it softened him some. Made him seem more a person than a walking weapon.

Sadie’d even remarked how he looked almost handsome, to which he’d twitched half a bow towards her with a goofy grin that made her laugh in turn. Felt better, things going this way; they’d left Valentine behind and the experience up at Colter’d turned to memory, more foggy than not after her dance with fever afterwards. Felt somewhat like they could breathe better, hide longer down here with just the two of them. Mind that there didn’t seem too many folk left around town to even recognize him even if he were the same as he’d looked before. “There’re some folk about,” she said to his ghost town comment, nodding to the lit lamp in the general store window, some clustered people along the way and crowded near the shade of alleyways. “Just... less, I suppose. Them Grays and Braithwaites were plenty in number, I reckon, and it ain’t so odd there ain’t folk about after all them we killed.”

Arthur let out a huff of laughter, turned bitter towards himself; dipped brief in the darkness of what’d prompted it, the grand decline of the gang in safety and numbers that it predicated. “You ain’t shot most of them,” he reminded her.

“Don’t remind me,” she muttered, still cross to this day that Dutch’d never given her the chance to make something of herself with the gang, even now that it’d fallen to shreds. “Weren’t for lack of trying,” added under her breath, counting the number of times she’d see Dutch walking about camp and ask when he was going to let her gun something down, the number of times he’d laugh like this were some grand amusement and promise her the opportunity when the time came _right_.

Never came right, that time, so’s she’d made it come to fruition on her own terms, later on and much to Dutch’s displeasure. Arthur’d shouldered it, but she’d seen it clear and saw the distrust in Dutch’s eyes whenever he looked at her after Sisika, after they brought John back home.

“I suppose them folk that were still alive had to figure on sticking around or heading out,” she added, clearer and back on topic. By the looks of things, too many tucked tail to run before anything else went up and hardly could be blamed for it.

Arthur shrugged, then seemed he changed his mind and nodded his agreement; watched the length of the street, dusty and beaten down. “Let’s check the station,” he said, gesturing towards the tracks. “I had me a contact of sorts there. Maybe he can point us the right way for some place to hole up.”

-

Alden were a pleasant sort, if you liked duplicity made to walk as a human. Bloke called himself a ‘discouraged man,’ one of some others that, according to Arthur, fed him choice stage jobs for fine tips that fleeced an outlaw’s pockets ahead of the score. Disreputable’d be closer to Sadie’s take on it, her preference not much for rats of any sort after the Micah Bell infestation. With his long nose, Alden even looked the part of a rodent; distasteful and distrustful of the man, she left Arthur to approach and talk with him at the train station.

“Hello, friend,” Alden murmured with all the congeniality one might convey to one, though Arthur’s posture read straight lines, careful business. “Been a long time,” added as he leaned forward to continue their discussion in hushed tones. Sadie’d leaned up near the barred window to listen, not of a mind to partake while she kept her eyes on the station, arms crossed over her chest.

“I been busy,” Arthur said, leaning an arm on the narrow strip of counter available. The companionable tone and expression were pulled on with the ease of a shirt; he were no Hosea Matthews, but he could scrounge up an act now and again without making an effort of it.

“It’s best you know that the, ah, discouraged gentlemen have continued to be... quiet, of late,” came the regretful warning. No leads on jobs and stages, she figured; just as well that it weren’t what they wanted.

Arthur shook his head, held his hand up to forestall the plaintive commentary. “I ain’t here about that,” he said. Hesitated as a coughing took over him and she glanced his way, mild alarm flaring that it were come back strong; his face turned aside, towards her and outside Alden’s line of sight, he shot her a wink to say it were just as much a play, then took a breath and focused on him again. That gave her a shot of relief and the idea to kick his shin later for giving her a scare.

“Took sick a while back,” he added, voice rougher from the effort, “and doctor says I best rest the winter somewhere warm.” The shrug, a what-can-you-do gesture, added effect; she caught herself paying too much attention, unfamiliar with the cons he’d pulled in the past, while glancing outwards now and again to keep up her guard. “Seeing how you and me have something of a _discreet_ understanding, thought you might be able to point me some place around here what might do for the lady and I.”

Here, Sadie felt the man’s gaze shift towards her, where he no doubt jumped to conclusions on what sort of lady’d been meant in those words. She let the appraising look slide off her shoulders without acknowledging it, watching instead those that moved in and out of the doors. The lot of them moved slowly, but like the town, most were intent on themselves and not drawing attention; their pace was of dogged exhaustion or fear and not curiosity expressed outwards. Too many souls afraid of being caught in the crossfire after years of being caught between warring families.

Alden considered that, looking like he were recollecting something that stood stiffly out of his mind’s reach. “There’s one place,” he drawled, slow and careful. “Fellow lives an hour’s ride north, or maybe it was northwest... Runs trap lines up in the Grizzlies through the winter. Locks his place while he’s gone, but if I had some, ah, oil for the mental cogs, might be able to remember what he done with the key while he’s gone.”

The insinuation to the words were clear and felt as greasy as the oily stimulus referenced, especially in that it came delivered with confidence that this expectation would be met. Arthur drew in a tired breath, though it weren’t lagged or shallow today, and shifted to rest his other arm on the counter’s edge. “I thought you said them discouraged sorts were being quiet,” he said with a dismissive scratch along his chin. “Not needing nudges no more.”

Shady negotiations shrouded in half-meanings and deceptive words; she fought the urge to shake her head, roll her eyes, or snort dry amusement. This was a lead and territory Arthur knew better, she best let it play out no matter that she preferred the more direct method of just threatening him for the details. Weren’t real _discreet_ to be doing that, she reminded herself, even if she’d feel better for it.

“Quiet does not mean we are not still ever _so_ discouraged,” was Alden’s competing play, a plaintive call for the poor working man with loose morals to be compensated for all the troubles life visited upon him.

Arthur stared at him a moment, like it were shock or disbelief that warred in him. “Right.” Flat and slow, it were clear that the statement hadn’t sold on him. He gave only some ground when he pulled a bill, ten dollars even, from his pocket and laid it careful on the counter between them to lubricate the old cogs of the brain.

Didn’t take long for the money to disappear into Alden’s pockets with a subtle nod of approval. “Seems this fellow didn’t want to take the key up with him, but he don’t trust banks after all them robberies of late. Us discouraged types, see. We have small safes in our working abodes. He may have left it in one, for a nominal fee of course. For... safekeeping.” All these words came with a smile that oozed more than stretched with sincerity and she started to wonder if he weren’t just swamp slime turned human.

“What’s the deal to liberate it?”

Weren’t that Arthur couldn’t crack a safe if he didn’t want to relent. She’d heard tell at camp that he had an ear for it, even with hell breaking loose all around him. But cracking it’d be illegal; draw attention they’d agreed to avoid. If she couldn’t beat this man for answers, he couldn’t crack the safe for a key; damn but it were hard to behave some days.

“My mind is foggy,” Alden said regretfully. “Do you know that I have been at this job for thirty years, friend? _Thirty_ years and nothing to show for it.” These words came with a subtle pat to the pocket where the ten-dollar bill had been stowed; a code conveyed to what the cost’d be.

That time, she couldn’t stop the derisive snort of laughter. “You ain’t over forty, mister,” she muttered with a shake of her head. “There ain’t no way you been at this since you was a kid.”

Arthur shot her a look, a warning to leave it and she shrugged, held a hand up to indicate surrender of the point to his favour. She’d let him keep at the game then. Satisfied, he appraised Alden, the man radiating all smug energy for his stated despondence; healthy, well fed, and greedy like most of the rest of this world, seeking extra monies wherever the opportunity arose. Weren’t that different from robbing folk on the roadside, she figured. “This place you talking about,” he said, looking to get them some details about it first. “It off the main roads? Quiet?”

“Real quiet,” Alden enthused with a nod, like a fisherman what knew the bass to be nibbling at the bait. “Hardly a soul out there. The fellow, you see. He’s got himself known to be a real loner type. No one bothers him no more and he don’t invite folk over to see what he’s got.” Assurances that he laid out to tempt them, waiting for the hook to set.

“Well, seems the sort of place a man could convalesce a few months in peace,” Arthur mulled, slow and smooth as he pulled out some bills from his satchel; these monies came from his share of the recompense, as they both called the Cartwright bills by this point, because the shared bits of it were sealed up in her own saddlebags the same way Charles’s showed her to hide them in Van Horn.

“But,” he said, eyes sharp, “the lady has a point. You ain’t been at this more than twenty-five years, friend.” Sadie watched from the corner of her eye, counted some two-fifty worth of bills laid down on the counter, hidden from view by his bulk and her posture leaned near him. Arthur kept his hand on the money, though, fixing a warning look to the man. “So long as you’re sure you’ll be full _discouraged_ from telling others about it.”

The reduction in his proposed fee came over less pleasing, but Alden nodded his understanding; seemed that being discouraged made a man malleable over what scraps he could get. “Sir, you know that I am the very _soul_ of discretion,” he assured as he kneeled, worked at what she presumed were the combination on the safe.

“Right.” That time, it was Arthur being dryly amused about it. “So long as you are, you and me won’t be having problems then.”

Hardly a minute passed before Alden straightened, placed a folded paper and a key on the counter to exchange; when Arthur relented, he slid the money towards himself and out of sight. “Now, since you will be enjoying your repast with some anonymity, should I be expecting correspondence for Mr. Kilgore?” he asked pleasantly, quoting the ridiculous name the gang had used the last time they were here.

That gave Arthur pause, a shake of his head; old rules followed were no longer needed. His chuckle was faint, self-effacing. “No,” he said. “No letters. Mr. Kilgore is... huh. Let’s just say he died.”

Alden nodded. “Of course, friend.” He afforded a glance her way, an arched brow, but looked about excited to being addressing her direct as she were to be dealing with him at all.

“I ain’t got no beau chasing me down,” Sadie said, spreading her hands wide to be showing there weren’t no hidden meaning there. “There come a time I expect something, I’ll tell you a name then.” Only Charles knew they were riding together, that Arthur were even alive; he’d wait on a letter from her before tracking them down. No point putting a pseudonym out what might risk the anonymity bought, and at a steep cost that depleted a good chunk of the monies Arthur had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P.S. Companion Piece: [Impatient Patient](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27625381/chapters/70320348)  
> \- Sadie being sick in Valentine, set just prior to this chapter.


	24. Chapter IX: Valentine - 09: Foolish Ideas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The weather's been fine and the ride nice; why linger on the bad things when maybe it's time to enjoy the good ones? Arthur shares some of his younger antics with Sadie, who thanks him by getting him drunk on rum and making him feel awkward about being valued.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

Sadie weren’t sure she trusted that Alden fellow more than she might a wolf in sheepskin to wander innocently with the herd and said as much to Arthur as they left the station, key in pocket and paper unfolded to show it a rudimentary sort of map. Marked on it were two or three cross trails and a few landmarks, distances noted between them, but not much else; it’d be a challenge to find, but maybe that’d serve them equal well for being found.

“I’d trust him more than I trust Micah,” Arthur said, folding the paper up to tuck into his satchel. Between Seamus and Alden, seemed he collected contacts that were questionable at best. Suppose that were part of the outlaw living, though.

“That ain’t a measure and you know it,” she hissed, knocking the side of his arm with hers. They both had something of a deficit of trust in Micah, making pretty much any random stranger more trustworthy than that rat.

“Sure is,” Arthur replied, pulling open the door to outside, gesturing for her to head out first. “Micah, I’d just as soon shoot as trust. This fellow? I’d think about it before I pulled the trigger.” It was a weak deflection of humour, long suppressed, and she frowned at his half a grin.

“Very funny,” she said, dry and flat in her tone.

“Why else’s you going to keep me around but for my good looks and bad jokes?” Arthur didn’t share her wary discontent; seemed securing some place reclusive for long-term to stay meant reason to celebrate in his measure, or at least be a tease.

She let out an exasperated breath and shook her head. “Don’t you give me second thoughts,” she warned him. “Way you’re talking’s crazy. Might be that fever again.”

Arthur ambled after her, his chuckle catching a couple times on a cough that weren’t near as bad as before. Least, that’s what she kept telling herself, since they were still a long ride to safety, and she didn’t want to be fretting about him collapsing halfway there. “I’m fine,” he said, headed her off with the words before she could put voice to her own. “Just a bit of ache today.”

“Don’t aim to overdo it then,” she said smartly, freeing Zeus’s reins from the hitching post, straightening the length of them before mounting up.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, stepped back to give her space to have Zeus back up before he unhitched his mare, mounted as well. “C’mon. We’ll head north, see if we can’t find some of these landmarks ‘fore dark.”

Orange and red hues were started to paint the sky, day growing later and later. Sadie thought it better for his health that they stay in town, rent a room, but still too ripe were the wounds of Rhodes and the risk of recognition still too high for comfort. Safer to get out. They could always set up camp like before; didn’t seem he suffered overmuch for it the night before, long as it didn’t turn habit to be sleeping rough day in and out.

“Fine.” Sadie let him set the pace and they started up north, back the way they’d come.

They rode abreast when no others were on the dusty dirt road, mostly not talking until Rhodes fell behind them again, easing off the worry that one too many eyes might recognize them and cause trouble. She caught herself questioning the idea that this could be safer, this far south. That it were more sound than other places. Arthur’d been running so long, from so many towns and laws, there really weren’t anywhere what counted as perfect to hole up in and she told herself that often.

Sadie pushed down those doubts, fooled herself to worry at them later, focused now on the ride, the familiar canter. Zeus, being bull-headed as her namesake, tried to slow down, heaving an annoyed breath as she pushed her forward, to pick up the pace and match Arthur’s mare. “How’s the new horse?” she asked, after a quiet bit of muttering at her mare picking sedate over steady for her prized trait that day.

“She ain’t bad,” Arthur said, relaxed in the saddle with one hand on his leg, the other holding the reins comfortably. “Less testy than Buell ever were.” A short laugh. Missed, he was; Buell’d given his former owner a run for his leg, literally, from what she’d heard. John coaxed that detail out of him with whiskey late at night, just the two of them at the campfire. That he’d told Abigail meant the information reached her, but with how quiet he’d been about the horse, she ain’t ever asked Arthur for details direct.

“Got a name for her yet?”

This gave him pause a moment, like he hadn’t associated that kind of permanence to the mare. “I don’t know,” he said, quite honest. Thinking, by the way his eyes stopped looking at her and the horizon, but wavered somewhere between them, his hand raised up to rub at the side of his neck. “Had me a horse once, what reminds me of this one’s temperament. She was Boadicea. Lost her at Blackwater.” Went quiet, a moment to grieve the loss; Arthur were the sort to truly bond with his horses, love them like he would family. After a moment, he cleared his throat and shrugged up a shoulder. “Suppose I’ll call her Eceni.”

Ee-sen-ee; weirdest name she’d heard for a horse and that were after Jake tried to call theirs... well. It weren’t quite for polite company to repeat, but he’d been fuming over how stubborn the gelding acted that he ain’t exactly put kind thought to it. “What’s that mean?” she asked.

Arthur shrugged, scratched at the back of his neck as he delved deeper to the thoughts, them things that’d pulled him to the name. “Read about this Celtic queen once, named Boadicea. She were a real handful back in her time, gave them Romans one hell of a beating. Her tribe, they was called the Eceni, and that woman had a hell of a spirit.” The way he explained it lay rich with fondness, memories of the lost horse mingled with the lore that’d prompted her name; Arthur gave a half-hearted chuckle. “Anyways, seems fitting, since this one reminds me of old Boadicea so much.”

There were a depth there that he’d deny to the end of his days, she’d no doubt about that; Sadie thought to highlight that but decided that maybe she ought keep it light. “I am impressed, Mr. Morgan,” she teased, pressed the palm of her hand to her chest like it’d given her vapours. “That sounded downright intelligent.”

“You don’t mean that,” he said, scruffing at the tip of his nose like he were bashful about it. The way his head ducked down, the chase of a smile at the corner of his mouth; they both had her wondering if maybe he were a bit pleased, at least, to be taking the compliment.

“Then how’s you end up knowing about a Celtic queen?” Sadie kept up the questions, sat up straight in her saddle and eyes on him. Bits of Arthur she knew existed were surfaced here, rare and worth soaking in like the midday’s sun.

This made him pause, bent over sudden with laughter at some funny thought in his head. “You ain’t going to like knowing,” he warned.

Sadie let out the huff of a breath, challenging him: “Try me.”

“You just remember,” he said, shaking his head, “that you done asked for this part.” Arthur slowed up Eceni to a walk to better explain, less attention needed to the road and ride. “We both know how Dutch was at the end,” he said, no contest nor surprise hid up in them words. “Thing is, the Dutch I first met? Long before he and Colm turned rival, before Annabelle and that mess? He were a better sort, then. Not good, mind you; none of us were. But he had these standards and dreams he wanted to lift folk up to.”

“I’ve heard.” Sadie measured her tone, careful. It weren’t that Dutch’d treated her bad, but it were about how he’d failed to treat anyone good towards the end there and she’d carry that chip on her shoulder long after the man finally died or disappeared. Or both.

“He and Hosea got this bright idea to teach a couple of scrawny nitwits their reading and writings.” Arthur paused, a gesture made first to himself and the second a more vague, encompassing one. “Me and John. They couldn’t’ve picked two thicker skulls to try and crack.” This with a shake of his head, smile twitched up as his thoughts went to them better times. “So’s, we learned. Somehow. But Hosea were the one what did the teaching, while Dutch had all these fancy philosophy books and stuff that’d make us both cross-eyed from boredom.”

The idea of a younger Arthur trying to learn his letters by the kinds of books she’d seen Dutch reading made her want to laugh; Sadie supressed it to a smile. Really didn’t seem his sort of material, being complex about ideals and laws and freedom of spirit. Mostly hogwash, to her; she ain’t ever needed someone else telling her what she ought value in her own life, especially not someone what writ them as words in a book, a faceless profiteering sort of deal.

“Hosea’d tell me to grab a new book from Dutch’s stack anytime we got done with one of ‘em,” Arthur had continued, drawn into the telling of the story. The energy of his voice picked up and a glance to his eyes showed her a bit of light, some fun hidden there; right then, didn’t matter how fool the story ended, but it’d be worth it for what it done to his mood. “We’d just finished up some big ol’ medical thing what talked about bodies and parts and stuff. Hosea sent me to get something new and I weren’t keen on no more labels and lists. I saw a book by this Tacitus fellow. Roman, I guess. Anyway, grabbed it ‘cause it was called his Annals and stupid kid me thought it right hilarious after what we’d just learned about what fancy folk call... things.” Arthur cleared his throat, the concept a bit too awkward for him to put finer definition to. “Well, Hosea smacked me with the volume a few times, made me read and transcribe it twice to-“ he paused to replicate the tone and poise of the silver-tongued conman, “- _learn to respect history and not laugh at the terms they used_.”

Sadie thought on that a moment, turning the word about in her head, trying to measure its meani- _oh_. Dear. “Arthur Morgan! You did not pick it because-“ She stopped, put her hand over her face and shook her head. “You’re a damn fool now and that ain’t changed since then. Annals ain’t...” Sadie shifted, patted the side of her thigh, right up at her rear, “ _that_!” She shot him a sharp look, but couldn’t help the smile at how foolhardy he’d been as a youth.

“I know, I know,” he said with a cough that cleared his throat, bit red in the face when she’d pointed out the area that it weren’t meant to be. “Turns out, these _annals_ were all his notes about what happened with the Eceni folk and this Tacitus talked plenty about Boadicea. She burned down London back when they first built it.” Arthur shrugged up his shoulder. “Me? I figured any woman what wanted to stop England before it were even England had to be pretty swell.”

“That has got to be the most foolish way to stumble onto an intelligent, thoughtful way of naming horses,” Sadie muttered with a shake of her head.

“Now, I never played myself fancy like Trelawny,” he protested, holding up a hand to stop her ranting. “I’m about as rough as they come, you know that.”

“What I know,” she clarified, reaching over to deliver a solid thump to the side of his arm, “is that you’re better than you say you are. You just ain’t always clever about it is all.”

He shrugged the hit off, looked up at the darkening sky; the rueful cheer of his escapades bled off as he measured the time they had before it became pitch, found it less than’d serve them well. “Hell. We ain’t going to find nothing this late,” he said, putting them back on track. “Let’s head off a ways, make camp. See what there’s to see come morning.”

-

Arthur sat heavily on his bedroll, looking to the fire a moment before he steeled himself and took a deep breath. Held it a while. The two day’s ride followed by dealing with Alden’s odd negotiations, and then riding out again had come up demanding payment for the crime of pushing himself too far. It were heavy in his chest, an ache that at least weren’t burning no more, but sapped his strength and energy all the same.

Back in Valentine, too many of his days were sleep, medication, and not much else. He’d convinced some part of himself that he were doing better, used the success of walking the main drag or running the stairs once to justify it. But that part were more smoke and mirrors than true recovery. Breathing itself turned stubborn, a painful effort the longer the day went on, and he schooled his expression to hide it, forcing deeper breaths no matter the hurt. Weren’t going to get past this sickness by sipping at the air like it were a delicacy.

At least the paranoia of being hunted had started to fade the further they got from the ridge, the further they rode from Valentine. Small miracles were had in no sign of Pinkertons in Valentine, Rhodes. They must’ve headed north, tail between their fine and fancy legs, after all of them that were killed going for Abigail, then in raiding Beaver Hollow. The price to pay for it were a bit high for them taxpaying folk out east and they’d been reined in. Or maybe they found what Sadie and Charles’d set up, figured that if Arthur Morgan were dead, then Dutch van der Linde ought be the same; it’d give no reason to stay and leaving’d be even more appealing after losing Cornwall’s funding once Cornwall went and lost his life.

“We have got fancy options for dinner tonight,” came from Sadie, sifting through her saddlebags and holding up each choice as she listed them off. “Canned peaches, potatoes, beans, carrots; we got salted pork and something that might’ve started as a duck. Kind of looks half dead and dried now; ain’t even sure where I got it. Biscuits, bit of stale bread and there’re some oatcakes if you fancy fighting Zeus for ‘em.” This with a huff as her mare turned her head with interest at the mention of her favourite treat. “You wait your turn, you greedy mare!”

He chuckled and scratched at the inside of his arm; it were a relief to have her sarcasm come back strong as it had. Weren’t things rough enough for her this year with losing her lifestyle, fighting to make herself a place in this new one, and then losing that and all the rest? That ride up north’d near broke her worse than before and he’d been of a concern. Worried some, to the point he went a fair stretch without sleep them first few days back. Never been too good at being the reassuring sort she might’ve need, but he done his best to be there that night she fell apart, the days that followed, and that’d seemed enough to help her heal.

“Toss me a can of them carrots,” he called over. “I need a reminder of how it’s bad, but ain’t as bad as Pearson’s cooking.”

A snort of laughter as she complied, then selected peaches for herself before sitting on her bedroll, laid out around the opposite side of the fire. Bit of a sweet tooth on her, he’d noticed; when given the option, she’d pick the canned fruits over boiled potatoes and dry bread. “That man could make boiled water taste sour,” she complained, pulling a small pack of biscuits out as well.

“Or burn it,” he added, turning the can over in his hands. “Knowing what I do of you now, it ain’t no small miracle what kept you from skinning and roasting his arrogant ass.”

“I came real close,” she reminded him. They both knew exactly when that’d happened and the where of it weren’t too far from where they camped now. Maybe that was why she’d wanted to come this way. First good thing, getting out of camp, that had happened since the loss of her husband and her home happened at the Point. “That day you saved his damn pride? Same day he told me he don’t believe in seasoning. Claimed that all he needed were a bottle of navy rum to make food taste good.”

“That man swears by that shit,” Arthur muttered. Too ripe and raw for his tastes, that vaunted navy rum. “Burns like hell all the way down. No wonder ain’t he tasted nothing off; fool burned his tongue bland years ago.” There came a moment, a fleeting good memory that surfaced of the subtle conspiracies he’d been dragged into by one or another of the gang. He grinned and looked over at her. “Y’know, Miss Grimshaw asked a few times for some of them herbs I grabbed from here and there. She’d drop ‘em in the stew when his back was turned.” His chuckle turned into a laugh, split off to a stretch of coughing, but full worth it for recollecting the smug satisfaction Susan shared with him them times it worked out.

Sadie laughed outright to that. “I’d wondered how he sometimes made it palatable,” she mused, cutting open her can, drinking the watery juice first.

“Ain’t ever been his intent, I swear it,” he replied, tearing open the tin lid on his.

They passed most of the evening in the reminiscence of better moments, stories that made them smile mostly, and laugh some. Arthur told her bits about life before Blackwater, when he was a dumb kid and twice as thick. Sadie listened, quiet, as though she might soak up some measure of him she’d not yet seen. She laughed when it were right, teased when he left himself open for it, and made clear remarks of how young Arthur Morgan seemed as foolhardy as the adult one.

At some point, she drew out a fresh bottle of rum, stating it a holdover from that final Valentine’s supply run, and opened it. Sadie took a swig, then stood up to move around the fire, sitting nearer him at the foot of his bedroll to make passing the bottle back and forth easier, less prone to dropping into the flames.

“To our survival,” she suggested, bottle tilted towards his hand.

“So far,” was the caveat he pinned to it before taking a drink. It was a smooth rum, aged nice and not awful raw like Pearson’s fancy; the kind he could properly enjoy and he nodded his appreciation of it.

Sadie crossed her legs, rested her arms on her knees as she watched the fire idly. “Don’t ruin it,” she warned with a sidelong glance.

Weren’t quite sure why she took that as harsh; his brow furrowed. “I’m stating facts, Sadie,” was his response, bottle pushed back her way. “Life ain’t about getting old, not the way I lived it.”

“Always some damn struggle,” she muttered, though just as guilty of being a fighter herself. The drink she took lasted long, two or three mouthfuls of rum swallowed before she shoved the bottle back to him.

“That’s how it goes for us with no fancy fortune or family.” Arthur shrugged up his shoulder, weren’t troubled by it no more; made peace with that problem years ago. “You was fighting the same before, just ain’t broke the law doing it. Ranch work’s hard.” Family life the hardest, and a trick he ain’t ever figured out. Pushed Marston hard towards it, though, like he might succeed where Arthur’d failed; hell, how many hopes of a future had he foisted on John towards the end there? Too many, like as not, but he ain’t figured himself around to make any of them his own no more. Seemed all he could do was put them to his brother and die happy with that – only he ain’t dead.

“Ranching’s different,” she countered, shifted her hand out to trace the warmth of the flames, that in-between where it drifted from cool air to hot. “Hard work, but the sort we could see. Jake was about making a difference, and me?” A soft laugh, the bitter pain not quite so entrenched in talking about the life she’d had. The same life that she’d admitted she’d never be a fit for again, maybe were even starting to let go of. “I was there to keep him safe, I suppose. I done it so much before we was married, I guess it just came habit.

“’Course,” Sadie paused here, swallowing thick on the sour note, “weren’t able to do that in the end.” Her head dropped down a measure, a sigh let loose as she withdrew her hand to rest in her lap. “What’s done is done,” seemed more a self-admonishment than anything. Sadie glanced his way, managed a weaker sort of smile, a different sort of understanding on her that weren’t bitter nor sour. “I suppose it’s you I get to keep safe now.”

There triggered a surge of -what? Pride? Indignation, he decided, that he needed the help or that she’d figure him worth the effort. Shaking his head, he took a drink. “You don’t mean that.” He was bold in telling her this. Helped that the rum were bold in telling him it were fine being bold; rum always hit him hardest, surest route to drunk’d be at the bottom of one of such bottles, sometimes two if he really ain’t wanting to remember the night.

“I do.” Succinct and sure in her statement, carried with half a smile like she’d realized something he hadn’t and weren’t near to doing. “Someone’s got to keep you safe from yourself,” she intoned, looking back to the flames.

Argue it; deny it; shrug it off; get angry. All sorts of ideas occurred to him on how to react, most of them rooted in a prideful foundation that he knew better than to embrace. Hard to shed the thought that he don’t need no one watching out for him, but-

Hell.

Arthur took a long drink from the bottle, swallowing down them protests. Lifetimes of living in the shadows of others, being the strength behind the orders, but there’d never been times when he’d sought things out or done things for himself. And when he did? Memories of Isaac, Eliza; they drifted about in the back of his mind. He’d tried to do right by them, only for irony to steal it away. And Mary. Hell, Mary. Chased after her beck and call, but never could do what he needed to make it work. Wrote it all off to never really being deserved of it. Bad folks such as himself couldn’t have what the law-abiding sort did, and he carried that belief still. About the only belief that still stood after all the rest shattered and fell with Dutch’s dangerous slide from sane outlawing to degenerate... everything, at the end there.

“It’s best you put them efforts to folk that deserve it,” was what he finally said, tilting the bottle in his hand, seeing the liquid half gone.

Sadie narrowed her eyes, ripe for the challenge and ready for the denial. “It’s not up to you, Arthur,” she said, quiet and firm for him alone to hear. “I got a good sense of you and you ain’t fooled me. There’s a reason I trust you, when I don’t trust any other soul but mine own.”

Easier, suddenly, to drink more of the rum, looking away from her. Arthur weren’t sure of what he was supposed to do here, never so good with being told he done things of worth without there being a take or a lead that it came riding the tails of. “Why’s that?” His challenge came gruffer than he’d meant, cut short by coughing from the alcohol’s burn in his chest fighting that of his lungs.

“Because you ain’t bad,” she said with a shake of her head. “You’ve wrapped yourself up in rot to keep it hid, but you ain’t deserving of the bad like you think.” She stole the bottle from his grasp, took a small sip of it before it were back in his hand, fingers just now reacting to it having been gone. She stood, stepped around their little fire to settle down on her bedroll. “Don’t matter to me how long it takes,” she added, softer than before, “but I’ll find the way to prove it to you.”

Then, as though they was finished without him saying a thing back to that, she stretched out her arms and shoulders, lay flat on her bedroll, and tipped her hat to cover her face, keeping out the bugs and the light. “G’night, Arthur.”

Left with the rum and a discontent shock that she’d set such intents on him, Arthur frowned and worked his way through the rest of the bottle, muttering some at her as she slept. The hour came late when he finally realized some part of her tactics: Get him drunk on rum so he’d sleep. Only figured that out right as he tossed down the empty bottle and decided it better to just. Lay down a spell. Figure out the troubling bits later. Be fine without a watch, set back from the road, ‘sides he figured she’d like as not murder anyone what tried to murder them, so... just. Maybe a bit of sleep and he’d be set.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Fact: Gaius Cornelius Tacitus was a Roman historian that wrote about the events that surrounded Boadicea and the Eceni (also spelled: Iceni). I definitely did not absolutely use the name Prasutagus for my horse in game because that was the name of Boadicea's husband. Nope. Never did.
> 
> Busy, distracted week! I started up the 'extras' work in [Transgressions](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27625381/chapters/67589134) and gave the series a proper name. Started notes in my notebook for the sequel and got a good chunk of the rising action done for the story of A Sinful Mercy (still two notebooks of typing away from where we at, LOL).
> 
> Next week? New location! And getting close back to plot. What plot? No, really. Plot. I promise.
> 
> iluall and g'night!
> 
> \- Kichi @[KichiWhy](https://twitter.com/KichiWhy) (Twitter)
> 
> P.S. There are two more scenes typed up for Transgressions that just need the sweeping edit. Y'all might see them this week.


	25. Chapter IX: Valentine - 10: Lost in Translation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The road from Rhodes is paved with ill history and a cracked foundation. Arthur is also hungover, which makes him a great talking companion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

Sadie awoke to the faint warmth of the fire’s embers burned low overnight and an unfamiliar noise: Arthur snoring. She tilted back her hat and looked across the remains of the fire at him, full asleep on his back, mouth hung half open, and the rising, falling nasal sound of a snore emerging unbroken by choking or coughing.

It were, in some few words, damn near distracting with the sweet relief it triggered. She smiled sleepily, content that her idea to get him relaxed with the rum, on the thought it’d have him sleep alright, worked out. Sadie rolled onto her side and propped her head up on her palm, letting herself watch him sleep in relative peace for some minutes.

There came still a watery slough to each breath, that faint whistle of air when it found its passage constricted now and again. At some point, it caught up and he coughed once, loud in his sleep, then his head rolled to the side where it’d be easier to get a breath in. And still with him deep asleep.

The strap of iron what’d felt pulled tight around her eased back, this moment an unbridled chance at seeing that their stay in Valentine, at least, had given him some health back. No matter that he must’ve struggled and strangled it out of the tuberculosis’s hold each step of the way.

Sadie left Arthur to that contented sleeping, quiet as she stretched, cleaned herself up, and started to break camp. Zeus, after being denied her oatcakes the night before, kept nuzzling persistently at her hand as she brushed away the night’s dirt and saddled her.

“You are greedy,” she advised the mare in a quiet undertone, relenting to feed her a cake. Then she gave one to Eceni before any fuss could be raised, mindful of being fair. Horses were good and could be real loyal creatures, but there were too damn smart. They didn’t much appreciate one being singled out for a treat over the other and she’d no mind to build a grudge against herself. Sadie took the time to give Eceni a similar brushing, a soothing familiarity to the action, as the morning started to stretch on. Her tack lay over near Arthur and she’d no intent to wake him, so she left the mare to graze without it, Zeus already working through the tastiest of autumn’s sparse weeds.

Then it was her turn, in a sense. Sadie settled herself near the fire’s remnants and slowly untangled her hair from its braid, using a wood comb she’d bought to pick apart the knots that twisted it. Braiding it had long been her best way to manage it, neat and out of the way, but it were only good a couple days before it became a wild mess. Sadie used her fingers to pry at the thickest of tangles before she could comb them out, some worked tight in the couple days out from Valentine. It reminded her that she ought be giving her hair better care than this, but weren’t much to be done about it until they had found this reclusive homestead Alden promised them. She’d considered, once, cutting off all her hair to shear away the work of it, but it’d been Abigail what stayed her hand, saying it better and warmer this way. Abigail’d done so much for her in a similar vein, her first beacon of light after – well, after them fucking O’Driscoll scum.

With a sigh, she shook out her hair and combed it until the matte of the strands started to pick up a shine, and then she started the familiar plait anew. Fingers worked from habit and she let them, thoughts moving to Arthur’s reticence of the night before. That thorough conviction he had about not being worthwhile, of value. When she asked once in camp, Charles had explained why Arthur turned all sour soon as folks were nice to him as him not thinking himself worthy of the care. Back then, she’d still harboured enough anger at anyone what worked similar to Colm’s boys to think it his due. Time went on, though, and she’d realized that Arthur, of all of them, deserved more to know his worth, his value to them and the world about them.

Sadie’d watched Arthur often after that wagon trip into Rhodes, finding things that said he weren’t all the awful he claimed to be. That he convinced himself to be, or maybe that others had convinced him to be. She learned to look for the hints past it the harsh threats and rough edges. The bits no one cared to see that’d let them understand more about him, like how he’d never shirk his share of the chores them days he was in camp, even pleasant about the tasks that everyone else bitched to. It was why she’d come to trust him, to let him be the only part of the van der Linde gang that she’d ask to ride with her. Arthur went and proved himself further, then, when she went for the fat pig what had killed her Jake. He didn’t judge her. Didn’t disdain her. Just made sure she were safe afterwards, left her to herself like she’d asked, and never pushed her to talk to it.

That day’d been long and dark. Bloodstained and come down off the high of finally gutting the bastard... that was when Sadie realized, locked deep in her heart, that she could want what she’d had before, but she’d never be the same for it. Calmness, of sorts, fell on her then, in seeing the truth of it. Angry still and would always be, but it became a part of her, much as Arthur had in his way.

Sadie Adler’d learned in life that it were only safe to trust the ones you loved, and Arthur...well. She’d been finding herself the past months liking him more than were appropriate for a widow six months lost. The fall of the Hollow and what came after only served to intensify it to the point she’d had to think on it, started to figure on whether she could or _should_ come to terms with it, whether it were worth putting to risk the careful partnership they’d built to satisfy this itch.

Sadie took the leather strap she’d been using for her hair, tied the tail of her braid, and stood; them thoughts she pushed aside to whittle down later, see if they’d take a shape worth keeping. She were good at separating out this and that; helped her to survive, for all it kept her from sorting out too many of life’s more emotional complications. Allowed her to find the direct route to the solution more times than not, brusque and heavy-handed. So, as it went most often, the conundrum of attraction was one of them things she rolled up, put aside to deal with later, on a day when there weren’t a dozen other worries what took priority.

-

Drinking near the full bottle of rum were a young fool’s game and Arthur’d been played right into, for all he called himself an old hand. Waking with half the day gone and a dull pounding behind his eyes, he slowly leaned up on his elbows and blearily looked about to see Sadie leaned up against a stump with her hat laid on the ground beside her, eyes closed as she soaked in the sunlight much as he had during the ride the day before.

“That,” he grumbled, rubbing at his eyes, “were a damn dirty trick.”

Sadie smiled without looking at him, stretching out her arms and shoulders to loosen whatever stiffness had set in during her warming repose. “You trying to accuse me of something, Arthur?” she asked and he swore that damn smile turned into a smirk.

“Ain’t seen you drink near enough of that rum,” he muttered, stretching back his neck slowly. Sleeping on a mattress long as he had risked turning him soft, muscles stiff after only two nights sleeping rough and he could feel the bones cracking back into alignment from sleeping on hard ground.

“No one forced it down your throat,” were her blithe remark, an eye cracked open to appraise his state. Bedraggled, but better; least he figured as much by the lack of concern that shadowed the action, the absence of questions probing how he felt. “We only got a bit of ground left to cover,” she added, grabbing for her hat. “Figured it’d be fine if we got started late.”

“Sure,” weren’t quite a marker of belief, but Arthur let it go with a shake of his head; hardly the first time he’d finished a full bottle on his own, or mostly on his own. Supposed she had good enough intentions in doing so; weren’t like she’d ‘ravaged’ his pretty little body that night in Valentine, so weren’t about to happen way out here. He stood slowly and stretched proper, then went to find the small creek near their camp so he could splash water on his face to wake himself up some, then take with cleaning up and getting himself ready to move again.

Eceni had been saddled by the time he got back and the fire smothered under dirt, water drawn from the creek earlier, he figured. Arthur gave Sadie a quick nod, appreciated the help, and make sure the mare’s tack were secured just right, all his gear stowed. He pulled a handful of biscuits out of the saddlebags to eat as he done it and, once satisfied, mounted up with a grunt and half a biscuit sticking out of his mouth. “Next time,” he vowed after he’d swallowed that last piece, “you ain’t getting away without drinking half the bottle.”

Sadie laughed and scratched the side of Zeus’s neck once more before she mounted up, nudged the mare ahead with the pressure of her knees, taking the lead. The laugh came off light, and he pushed aside the thought that it weren’t quite real. That night she’d ridden back from Colter came haunting him too frequent, made him second guess whether she’d full recovered any time she faltered. This laugh, though, sounded real enough that he relaxed; reminded himself that she’d been doing better now and after one hell of a rough patch... Hell if he knew folk that’d’ve handled it better.

All that he’d put to his journal’s paper later; he rubbed a hand over his face for the now as he strove to finish up the slow trek to fully awake as they rode out. “How long was I out?” he finally, grudgingly asked.

She shrugged and eased Zeus to the side of the path, slowing the mare to fall back and match pace. “Longer than I was,” she offered as an obvious aside. “Deeper too.” There, brief it were, but he caught the trace of a smile that just proved she’d meant the cards to fall that way. “Sure sounded it, from the snoring.”

Arthur narrowed his eyes at her, gauging truth from tease; never been accused of snoring, but ain’t shared sleeping space with many folk since he’d moved from the shared tent with Marston when they was younger to the open-sided one he preferred, always set nearest to the ammunition should anything go south and he need more than a gun to deal with it. Open skies and warm winds were his preference; felt freer that way and it weren’t like he preferred dallying with others to need the privacy.

“Don’t feel it,” he said, leaning back and yawning something fierce.

“You sound it,” she said, less mocking this time. Almost like she were serious and he avoided meeting her gaze on that, didn’t like having to face just how damn awful he’d been when she first found him. Hated the way the relief he’d see made him think to how much a struggle he’d put her through, even after he gave his word to try mending himself. “Your coughing,” she added, careful. “It only come up once or twice all morning.”

Arthur didn’t quite have that measure, being the doofus what slept through it all, and hell but if his back still didn’t hurt, his lungs fighting against more than shallow breathing whenever he dropped his guard. But, maybe coughing’d relented some; he’d lost track of it weeks ago, but seemed she hadn’t. He grunted, aimed for a neutral sound to it to keep off talking more.

They’d made their way back to the road, empty but for a wagon moving north; likely departed from Rhodes earlier in the day and intent on making some other form of civilization before nightfall. Sadie urged Zeus ahead and he pulled Eceni back, forming a single line to yield the dusty road to them. Courtesy blended with caution prompted it; they had to be near the first of the landmarks based on the rough map and weren’t too keen on being seen or followed, so sooner the wagon passed them and pulled ahead, out of sight, the safer they’d both feel.

Arthur tipped his hat to the lady on the driver’s bench as the wagon pulled past, her sat next to what he presumed to be her husband. “Folks,” he greeted, gravelly but amenable. No point antagonizing most folk, no matter how hungover he felt; mind that he’d be too happy to put a fist in the face of those what deserved it, especially in his state.

The woman looked up his way and, brief though it were, he saw a spark of recognition. Her eyes went wide and she started tapping at her husband’s arm with an urgency that made him instantly uncomfortable, saying something- weren’t English, whatever it was, but he’d heard it before.

Sadie tensed, a hand moving towards her revolver as she looked back to see what the fuss was going on about. Apart from the bounty hunter on the train and her own encounter with Marston – not including Doc Calloway, who’d prefer as much to be forgotten, he figured – they’d relished their anonymity and this sudden excitement ran full contrary to that and it had her guard up, immediate. “Arthur,” she said slowly as the driver hauled back on the team, pulling the wagon to a stop. “You happen to know these folk?” Her fingers brushed at her holster, tense and ready to draw; Zeus shifted under her, guided to face what she’d assumed threat over friendly, a step back taken as she pulled steady on the reins.

“They sure seem to think so,” he said, drawing back on the sorts of folk he knew, had encountered in Lemoyne. He knew them, that much recognition came easy, but he knew too damn many to place it quick. Processed it, the guttural tone of incomprehensible words, the area they were in and then it hit him; the run from the Overlook, when he and Charles found the woman and her two children. The father, hogtied and hostage for the sake of some bit of gold that ended up Arthur’s when it were all done. An insult, after his own reluctance to help the family, that he’d shed quick as he could in the camp ledger, left to stain that and not his damn fool ignorance for wanting to leave them to survive or suffer, telling himself it wouldn’t’ve mattered which.

The wagon stopped, the woman climbed down from the bench with a gentle hand from her husband, speaking animatedly and gesturing towards the space within. Two children – them same damn kids what’d hid behind her as she held a shotgun to him with her finger close to the trigger – cautiously looked out and were drawn to look at Arthur with her pointed hand. His discomfort mounted and Eceni took a step back, already attuned and sensitive to the shifts in his mood.

“It’s them folk Charles and I helped,” he said, holding his hand out to stop Sadie from drawing on them. How long’d that been? Four months ago, but something about them voices felt more recent, their insistence being pushed away from him, stumbling... Arthur shook his head to clear that eerie echo from his mind, stiffened his hand into a clipped wave to greet them, or at least show he remembered them. “They was attacked. We helped the fellow out. I guess they ain’t forgot it.”

Clemens Point is where they’d found him and that turned out quite the boon for the gang over the mess that’d’ve been Dewberry Creek for their next camp, for all of Micah’s fool assurances of its safety. One of them rare times that doing the morally right thing done rewarded him. What he didn’t put voice to were that it’d been Charles’s kinder nature that saw the help done, near forced it. Arthur’d been focused on the gang’s safety first, trying to find some place or way to keep those close to him safe. The plight of strangers what couldn’t even speak the same language as him ain’t seemed all that pressing until Charles challenged him on it, called him out for playing dense and cruel in the face of plight.

The young girl he remembered could speak some broken English; he looked over, saw her scrambling onto the driver’s bench and perched next to her father. “Thought you was all gone from here,” came out gruff, gesturing roughly away from himself, from the area. They stood uncomfortably near where it all went down; he’d figured it a place they’d avoid like some sort of plague.

Puzzled by either his words or his motion, the girl took a few minutes to process it, her hands gesturing vaguely as she pulled apart and translated his statement as best she could. Then, someone back in the wagon spoke to her in a similar tongue and understanding dawned in her eyes. She shook her head, firmly that time, and pointed south, back towards Rhodes. “Food,” she said with a gesture to the wagon, then she pointed northwest, smiling as she conveyed this. “Home.”

“They must be stocking up before winter storms hit,” Sadie commented, her mare shifting back and forth, her unease relaying discomfort, triggering minor nerves. She’d not been much involved then, the bustle of uprooting the camp for the move part of what triggered her last thread of patience with Pearson’s arrogance to fray and snap. He ain’t talked much about what led to Clemens Point around the gang neither, once he’d made sure Charles got the credit for finding it. With her not knowing ‘bout it, then that sure would make all these people seem mighty suspicious.

The mother had approached Eceni by now, carefully placing a hand on his leg with what looked like concern writ on her face. She asked a question of sorts in her language and he shook his head.

“I _still_ don’t speak that,” he said, slow and loud and clear like it might stick this time.

“You...” the girl concentrated, struggling with the words. Her expression brightened and she put a hand to her forehead. “You were... sick? Better now?” Her brother stared at them with wide eyes, head poked out of the wagon just behind her and a hand on her shoulder.

Echoes of a time less recent, ill and plagued by the cough and the chase of the fever. The taste of dirt on his tongue, Arthur collapsed between towns and riddled with exhaustion. Drawn towards the darkness, tempted to just... rest, eyes closed and breath wheezing. Waking to voices and indistinct bodies clustered around him, the cool taste of water poured into his mouth and words that were raised in questioning tones, incoherent and insistent, until he staggered to his feet, stumbled out of some house he did not know. Fogged and foreign, he’d pushed the memory to the clusters of hallucinations that dogged him when his fever burned hot, to be left and forgotten.

Drawn back into the here, the now, Arthur stared at the girl as comprehension restored itself to him, bit by fragmented bit. “That was you,” came the realization’s dawning. He caught himself, shook his head, and reined Eceni back, out of range of the questing hand and concerned looks. “No, I ain’t better.” He coughed, loud and hard, more to scare them back than any driving need. “Real sick.” Said with a firm thump to his chest, to drive home the meaning, keep them at bay with fear of it, if need be. Didn’t need no fussing over him, not here and now; not ever, the way he thought it some days.

A flurry of foreign words, the family discoursing over what his words and actions meant. The young girl piped up with the shadow of fear in her voice: “Dying?”

Sadie shot her a withering look. “No, he ain’t dying,” she said, sharp enough that the youngin’ recoiled. She forced herself to give a moment, breathe out some of the frustration that struck her at the question, and shook her head. “Not no more, at least,” she said, some of the edge out of her tone, but hardly enough to salve the startled look.

Arthur sighed, not fighting no more that raw fear what kept at Sadie about his health. “Still sick,” he reiterated, to the family. “Stay back, y’all. You don’t want this.”

Another round of hurried conversation, not one of the words in English. Hell, he’d even take some Spanish, long as it were the sort of words that Javier taught them – mostly swears. Just none of this... non-English jabber what made him feel even duller than the hangover did. The husband started checking his pockets, as though he had some solution hid within, though his wife’d moved back to the wagon, taking out a canteen and offering it up.

“What?” Patience slipped further and further from him, especially as she done tried to explain it to him in that damn language of hers and he frowned.

Frustration mounted, on her part, as she repeated herself with a gesture of the canteen.

“I don’t understand you!” he growled as Eceni tossed her head, wary of her rider’s tone.

There came a tentatively cleared throat, a different person emerging from the rear of the wagon, stepping down onto the dusty dirt road. “She is saying you were very parched when they found you last,” words that were, at least, English, even twisted with a thick accent. Austrian. Like a leech from the past and his anger spiked. “She wishes you drink the water, so that you may feel better.”

Arthur hauled back on his reins, a knee jerk reaction to the speaker; Eceni tossed her head again, dancing aside in confusion at her rider going from irritated to full on anger. He swore and put his hand quick to her neck, a firm pat and a murmur to calm her a moment before his lips peeled back to bare his teeth, savage and primal. “Herr Strauss,” he said, went for flat and came off full dangerous, like he were ready to shoot, stab, or worse. “I recall telling you I didn’t want to see your damn mug ever again.”

Leopold Strauss looked wane, hands held in a weak surrender and feet shuffled one or two steps to the side, adopting as non-threatening a pose as he could. “It is purely coincidence, Herr Morgan,” he placated. “These fair people were allowing me transit with them, nothing more.”

“Forgive me if I ain’t buying your shit again,” he growled. Only, truth told, he weren’t looking for forgiveness on that, just to be done chasing down desperate debtors to apply a hurt that’d make them even worse off, easier prey the next time a shark came swimming. “Spent long enough doing your work to much trust anyone in your particular... profession.” Ain’t bothered to hold back the disdain there either.

“And to each their own, Herr Morgan,” were his weak atonement, a middling ground to keep from making worse this tense moment. Strauss looked uncomfortable and kept his gaze just beyond Arthur, polite without challenging him. “That does not change the fact that this is an innocent encounter. I have no desire to... rekindle our business relationship, I assure you.”

Derisive and sharp were his laugh, truncated and deadly. “Damn right you don’t.” His recollection of the damage wrought by the desperate loans were etched in him, never fading; Arthur carried the sin of being the force behind it and would until the devil managed to beat off Sadie and claim his soul. Ain’t blamed Strauss for that, but sure did hate how he’d find the weakest sort to prey on and then send Arthur forward like some damned horseman of the apocalypse. Hell, didn’t even blame Strauss for getting sick, from sending him to beat Downes; he’d been damn complicit in doing it.

Just.

Hell.

The family interceded, speaking up with a flurry of what sounded like questions flooded equal with confusion. Strauss responded similarly, leaving off their uncomfortable reunion and relieved to engage in a more spirited, equal discussion with them in that harsh language of theirs.

“You speak that...” Sadie cut in, gesturing towards the yammering family. “Whatever the hell it is they’re speaking?” She’d been peripheral to it, peripheral to the complexities of how he hated Strauss’s profession, so she went to purpose first. Always to the end result with Sadie.

“Not exactly,” Strauss clarified, switching awkwardly back to English. “The Hoffman family is of German origin and I am Austrian. It is very close in language and we manage quite well.”

That, grudgingly, gave Arthur a way to talk with the family, albeit one that left a sour taste in his mouth; he’d meant it, being done with Strauss, and weren’t much on to his enjoyment to find himself conversing with him again. “What’s that they’re saying then?” he asked, nodding to the, what- Them Hoffmans, according to Straus? Sooner that he could sort out what they wanted, the sooner he could send the leech packing again.

Long suffering in his patience, Strauss gave him a level look without implication or intonation. “They are simply concerned for your health,” he said calmly. More words came up between them and Strauss responded, nodding once. “Ah, yes. And Herr Hoffman wishes to express his most fervent gratitude for what you did for he and his family.”

“Weren’t nothing, I said it before.” Arthur didn’t like to think on what he’d done there, to linger on how close he’d toed that moral line, pushed to being better by Charles and nothing more. He cleared his throat, shook his head to the expectant look from these Hoffman folk.

Strauss relayed his words, that side of the conversation filled with more questions than answers by the tones and the looks he found them sending his way. There came a break in it, a pause as the Austrian held up a hand to allay them a moment, turned his attention back to English. “What would you have me say to your health?” he asked, clearly uncomfortable to be asking such given their history.

“That I ain’t dead,” were his short statement. Arthur kept himself guarded, wary of sharing more with even an exiled van der Linde gang member. Especially not the one he’d sent packing himself.

“That much is patently obvious, Herr Morgan.” Strauss’s words came over dry and he looked to Sadie, as though she might offer something more meaningful to the exchange.

“Arthur’s doing better than he were,” she said, the care of her words showing her equally wary of him. When all’d started falling out, she’d been one of the unwavering few, clear on her side being his. That fact she kept on here, reluctant to even give over the time of day, much less details on what’d happened after his inelegant, forced departure.

Strauss nodded and turned to the family to relay some variation therein; the indicators that he’d at least kept the gist of meaning the same came by some nods, expressions of relief, and then yet more words.

Sadie sidled Zeus closer, leaning towards him. “What’s the plan here, Arthur?” she asked, watching the exchanges continue with Strauss leading the conversations. It being his past actions what mired them here, made sense to have him take the lead on it.

“Don’t know,” were his quiet response. “This’s messy, them headed down the same road.” Options were run through his head, fast and plentiful, but trying to find one what’d extricate them without leading on they might be stuck around this area long term turned out real hard.

“Head back Rhodes way?” she suggested. “Circle around, after they’ve gone?.

“Yeah.” It meant losing more time after already sleeping half the damn day, but keen on the alternatives he weren’t. Arthur sighed, rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Best bet, I figure.”

Strauss cleared his throat, an expectant interruption that caught both of their attention. “Herr Hoffman wishes to know what he can do,” he said, slow and deliberate. “He does not feel as though he truly expressed his gratitude.”

Arthur snorted a laugh, a flash of uncomfortable irritation. “Damn fool gave me a bar of gold,” he said harshly. “Ain’t worth more than that. It’s done. He paid me. Leave it.” Warning in his tone that prompted some convolution of disappointment and concern, which served to rile him further, like these folk pitied him for wanting nothing but to damn well forget his weakness of that day. Arthur felt the need to leave. Now. All this fuss, weren’t for nothing good.

Hoffman brightened, some solution dawned on him, and pulled a small card from his pocket, folded it over in his hand. He walked up and held it out, indicating that Arthur take it, all the while speaking that strange language to Strauss.

“This card is the address of his family’s business,” the translation came after a pause and a quick exchange of harshly accented words. “Located in Saint Denis, at least in part.”

Arthur reluctantly accepted the card, tucked it quick into his satchel where he could leave it in the pages of his journal. He nodded stiffly, and never paused to read it.

“Why’s they headed north, if they got themselves set up in Saint Denis?” Sadie asked, distrust colouring her tone.

“They have secured a new residence, of late,” Strauss explained, no prompting required on the point. “After their unfortunate experience in Lemoyne, it is Herr Hoffman’s hope to expand his family’s business interests in Blackwater, where there is perhaps... more presence of law.”

That triggered a grimace, all too true for some more than others; he nodded, stiff. “Then best get moving,” Arthur grumbled, turning Eceni to head south for the time being. All too ready to disperse, but Arthur called out one last thing to Strauss before they full departed. “Herr Strauss, far as you and I are concerned and anyone what asks?” his voice were thick with threat. “You ain’t seen nothing of me. Good as dead, got it?”

Strauss, ready to climb back into the wagon, turned a moment to look at him, to consider the words and the dangerous promise underlying it. “I’ve seen nothing, Herr Morgan,” he said, a solemnity to the words and a sad smile, brief and flinching. “I am too wise to your methods to dare try otherwise.”


	26. Chapter X: Willowstead – 01: What We Want

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dutch van der Linde will not stay foundered long; new leads are to be followed and new business relationships forged. Speaking of relationships: Arthur and Sadie are terrible at expressing emotions, but do quite well at fighting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.
> 
> This chapter is dedicated to Deni (Denicer)!

Midnight in Saint Denis marked its passing with frivolous parties at the more well-to-do houses, drunken fools stumbling about late night saloons of the business quarter, and general quiet about the residential areas. All startling normal for a town in turmoil, with criminal families decimated, power vacuums abounding, and two great plantation families in shambles.

The dichotomy, the duplicity, was part of the soul of the city. Lifetime residents no longer looked askance about it, no longer questioned that when Bronte fell, another would simply rise to take his place, as he had taken the place of forces before him. Cartwright came whispered now, some in fear and others in vitriol, but few could question that this name was the new power to enact its iron grip upon the legal and illegal activities of Lemoyne’s finest city.

Like the estates of so many before them, the Cartwrights lived in opulence and made use of their gains to lift themselves from the rabble and the rubble. Removed from the heart of Saint Denis’s richest district, they lived in a two-story manor styled after the plantation homes that dominated still the taste of the ill-favoured wealth of the state. Restored to grandeur after the war and made popular by its late-night parties on the garden terrace, richly supplied and rarely overseen by the two heads of the new foremost family. No expenses were spared in entertaining the wealthy, a steady stream of staff in and out the side entrance ensured liquor, food, and friendly company were forever on hand to keep eyes and minds from caring to what the family did while the city’s business elite foundered in their vices.

Towards the rear of the house, on a second floor well-secured against the idle intruder, there was the office of Samuel Cartwright, banker and financier of some less legitimate sorts; here he spent his evenings, meeting with business associates and running tallies on the revenues, the losses, the very fabric of the enterprises that he funded.

All very elegant, organized, and _visible_ in ways that only the purportedly civilized nations could allow to fester and flourish beneath their laws and force and lack of _freedom_. The very epitome of that which Dutch found distasteful in government and law enforcement; the hubris of enacting rules and then an ignorance in allowing them to be flaunted by those that bore the right name, the deepest pockets, or the cruelest of associates. How deeply... flawed it all was.

And yet, how very _necessary_ that he endeavour to embrace it.

Cultivate it.

Make use of it in ways that Bronte’s arrogance had kept him from when last he dappled in the underground economies of Saint Denis.

The irony inherent to this put a rusted edge to his humour, indulgence required in spades to simply smile and ply his art. Myriad factors placed him in need of the very societal rot that he disdained, but it was the vexing lack of _influence_ that cast its shade over him. Forced him to play with the weaker hand, until he could change the dealer and the deck in his favour.

All while he smiled and drew deep from his cigar, seated across from this Samuel, public face of the Cartwright family. A man that ran to the lesser side of thirty, with skin clear of scars and posture clear of breaks; telltale signs of one afforded a better life, start to finish. His eyes, however, were cunning and dark, his smile sharp for all its pleasant façade. Ink stained his fingertips as they brushed over one of two ledgers, red and black, that sat on the desk.

“How is it that we have come to meet?”

No lilt of question to his tone, no ignorance-shrouded wonder; the familiar ploy to bait fawning words did not merit his response and so Dutch only breathed out the smoke and returned the predatory smile, a brow arched. Bronte started at the advantage, John’s boy held in his custody, but Samuel did not and would not. Late learned, but the lesson had been learned; you do not _give_ to these societal wolves and you did not let them _take_ first.

Samuel huffed, a derisive laugh that he shrugged aside with a twitch of his hand. “Your reputation,” said with sincere appreciation, “is proven, Mr. van der Linde. Our mutual associate bet me five dollars that you would not speak to such weak bait.”

“Only five?” Dutch feigned injury to that, as though his pride had been hurt. “I am wounded.”

“The test is hardly worth more,” came his flippant reply. “The cowardly seek to fill a silence and the meek to prove their worth; had you taken the bait, then our meeting would be over. But! You survive for the next round. Bravo.”

Dutch drew in a breath, tapped the ash from his cigar in the fine cut crystal tray on the desk. “I’m not here to play _games_ ,” he said. “Those frivolities are for men without purpose or vision. I have been assured that you are a rather inspired sort, above such trivialities. We are better than that, the both of us.”

Samuel pulled the red ledger towards himself, thumbing through the pages until a fresh sheet could be found. “You’ve played many games in Lemoyne,” he commented, drawing a fountain pen from his desk drawer and removing the finely engraved cap. “And you unseated decades of powers and influence in a handful of weeks before you disappeared. Some might admire you for it. _I_ might admire you for it.”

The subtle compliment made his smile a shade more sincere, though he kept that card close to his chest; Dutch did not despise pandering, only _disloyalty_. “You flatter me,” he said, leaned back in the chair. Open and confident, as though he could speak no wrong; a posture of strength and surety. “But the tinder was bone dry and in need of but a spark. Hardly worth the effort.”

“And then, north to lay your final siege to the bulwark that was Leviticus Cornwall,” Samuel continued, jotting down four letters at in the page’s header. “Which leaves me curious as to why you now come, vouched for by Josiah Trelawny himself, and bearing the promise of your fealty to my family?”

Dutch laughed and shook his head, clear on this point. “My assistance,” he corrected, “in a _mutually_ beneficial arrangement.”

“Ah, yes. _Assistance_ does burden you less to the bindings of loyalty,” he mused, laying the pen down on the open ledger. “What assurances do I have that your history of _assisting_ certain other families in this fine state will not be repeated? It proved quite disadvantageous to them.” Though advantageous to the Cartwrights as he understood, able to surge to their place as peak predator in the absence of competition.

“They suffered from a lack of vision,” Dutch said, soothing the man without bending his own position. “You and I, however. We are men of vision and it is much easier to realign a slight difference of such visions than it is to tolerate an uninspired cesspool of inbreeding and failed legacies.”

“Quite.” Samuel leaned forward and picked up the pen again, added to the page with short, precise lines; his smile carried a bitter twist, the first weakness in his façade in relation to legacy; Dutch noted it, but chose not to dissect it then. “And your vision is... freedom?”

“My vision is what America was promised to be,” he provided coolly. “Perhaps, when the job is done, we could discourse for hours on what that means,” added, a nudge towards purpose that caught Samuel’s attention, even brief.

They were interrupted then by the single-panel side door for the office being pulled aside on its track and a young man shoved in, followed by a woman; both were layered with road dust and she looked irritated about it, while the man... Dutch looked a bit closer at him, noting the way his eyes darted back as though he might see her, then to the red ledger; he licked his lips, a sign of fear, and each attempt to straighten up was foiled when the woman would grab his shoulder and shove him another step further, her free hand slamming the door back in place.

Samuel blinked, broken from the lure of their prospective opportunities, and looked over to the arrivals. “Ah, right,” he murmured and looked to the book again, shifted through the pages until he found one filled with notes and numbers in columns, totals difficult to read from Dutch’s angle. “Mr. McIntosh, it’s very disappointing that it took my sister’s persuasion to have you return for a full accounting of your little venture.”

This McIntosh swallowed thick and looked with panic at Dutch, though he gave no supportive look or gesture to assure him, instead mildly curious to this show of force. Fingers dug sharp into his shoulder had the man wincing, ducking his head and staring to the floor instead. “Yer money’s-“

One thick stack of bills landed on the desk, tossed over by the woman, defiance in her eyes and every line of her body. She laughed and it came out rough, half-formed, but no one paid it notice.

“There were three stacks, Mr. McIntosh,” Samuel noted quietly, head bowed as he inscribed new figures in the ledger. “This is one. Where is the other two thousand dollars?”

Three thousand dollars was no small catch; Dutch looked with carefully veiled interest to the ledger, then McIntosh. “Money troubles?” he queried, casual.

Samuel seemed startled a moment, as though he’d forgotten their own meeting and merits that had consumed his attention just prior. “Mr. van der Linde,” murmured, difficulty seeming inherent in splitting his attention – a second weakness to ply upon later. He shook his head and then smiled. “A joint venture, not unlike what you have proposed,” he assuaged. “Mr. McIntosh here had some brilliant ideas and we invested in them. It appears we make have to revoke those investments, as this is... not the return he promised us.” A disappointed look cast to the single stack of bills, significant meaning conveyed in that action.

Hard-toed boots tapped on the floor with impatience, stretching the man’s attention further as the woman snapped her fingers, pointed to McIntosh.

“Momentarily, sister,” he said, an unpleasant warning to his voice. Samuel straightened up in his chair, resumed the more charismatic assurance he’d possessed, and gestured to the double doors. “You impress me, Mr. van der Linde. Speak with our associate, Josiah, and make arrangements; I will furnish your plan with monies and bodies, then we can see how well our visions align, yes? And perhaps engage in that discourse you promised.”

Dutch stood and placed his cigar between his lips, reached out to shake his hand. “Very well,” he agreed. Monies and bodies were two things he had an unfortunate shortage of at the current juncture, so this would do. “I look forward to our profitable business ventures.”

He did not stay beyond that, stepping out to the hall and lingering there beyond the closed door a moment, listening as he finished the cigar. Muffled as the discussions were, he could make out mentions of a stagecoach, a murdered associate, and something about a robbery gone sour. Then, the keening scream of swift justice being delivered and the simpering cries of a man broken and pleading for second chances. Oh, how he had heard that before, and how well timed these Cartwrights had made this little show of their power. Dutch smiled and dropped his cigar, grinding it down into a small, burned patch on a rich hardwood floor, then strode away, intent on investigating leads at this late-night terrace party the Cartwrights were known for.

This would be an interesting game.

-

Night hovered close to falling when, finally, they pushed aside the low-hanging curtain of branches that hid their ‘rented’ abode, noted on the map as Willowstead, from casual view. Almost missed the trail to it, covered well by the hanging boughs of the aged willow, the thickly grown brush and young trees clustered around it suggestive that there had been more, once, before it had been torn down and forced to grow anew. Arthur, mood foul since their unwanted reunion with Strauss, muttered a curse when they’d found that the trail ducked under the willow on the second time backtracking.

Sadie knew him to be tired. The curve of his back and the angle of his shoulders were not far from collapse, strained by days of riding and then dealing with history best left to hindsight drew his reserves thin. She didn’t comment to it then, dropping down from Zeus and drawing her revolver, just to be safe.

There were a couple of sheds, a well, a small barn, and a central cabin that served as the main house. “I’ll clear the barn,” she said, moving ahead as her mare started nosing at the grasses. Trees surrounded the property, larger willows grown thick in the back of the clearing a contrast to the younger growth that crowded the small access trail, and on the whole it looked that like the name were about as accurate as one could get for a place.

Arthur dismounted a few moments after, bearing the iron key and his gaze turned to the cabin, where a thick metal padlock barred access. “Holler if you see something off,” he said. Damn did his voice come out rough and when he dragged a hand over his face to wake himself up, it took a second pass before he started towards the building.

Cautious they were, but weren’t needed once they completed the sweep. Barn was empty, four stalls standing bare and feed loft empty of bodies and grains. Sadie walked the treeline to be certain before she called her clear, hearing it echoed from the house. Door hung open, padlock dropped on the ground after it fell from the latch; she picked it up and carried it in. Light were starting to fade out, but she could see sensible enough accommodation contained within. A bed tucked off to one corner, stone-and-mortar fireplace set further along, then shelves and cupboards stretching into the next corner, a tub sink set for a kitchen, a small door to a side room propped open, washing tub tucked in there. Other than that, a few chairs and a table that she dropped the padlock onto, looked up to see a loft with a wooden ladder not far from the door, like as not where supplies were best kept away from vermin.

“You go get them horses set up,” Arthur said, toeing his boot through the ashes of the fireplace. “I’ll get the fire going.”

Sadie left him to that, come back out to see Zeus sedately munching the long grass and Eceni looking with interest at the corral that stretched out from the barn, tall flowers and sweet grasses overgrown there. She led them both into the barn and they settled in easy, bribed with oatcakes and the promise of grazing in the corral’s buffet of overgrowth come morning. Sadie hauled them fresh water, pulled their tack, and brushed them down before she felt comfortable leaving them each in a stall for the night.

Darkness’d full fallen by the time she’d done that, the moon some days shy of full giving off enough light to make her way to the well. Saddlebags and bedrolls she rested on the ground a moment, drawing a fresh bucket of water for inside, then balanced the load as she made her way back into the cabin proper. Orange glowed faint in the window, promise of heat and light radiated out from the stone fireplace.

Inside, she dropped their gear on the table and brought the bucket over to the counters, set it there to sort out, boil clean later. “We’ll need feed for the horses,” she said, looking about at two separate and simply paned windows, a match for simple basic fixtures and furnishings. Plenty of hides and furs were spaced about, tribute to the owner’s traplines, and not much seemed amiss. Arthur were crouched down at the far end of the cabinets, digging through and hauling out a few cans of food.

“Not much,” came his assessment. “Figure we settle a few days. Then we’ll know what all we need. Figure an order down at the Rhodes store, see if they won’t lend us a cart to haul it all back.” Unsaid, the chance to let Strauss and the Hoffmans get significant distance towards Blackwater.

Sound were the concepts to his plan, but his voice weren’t quite rich with surety. His domain’d been enforcement, running jobs and keeping folk in line; Pearson and Grimshaw’d handled the logistics of living. Arthur came off closer to lost, but part of that were how tired he must feel, so she let him keep barrelling through the ideas, moving to the next problem to sort.

“Only one bed,” he said, an awkward nod to it. “Loft’s clear though.” He looked ready to make a call on it, but she spoke up faster.

“I’ll take that loft,” she said, quick and unwavering. “No point hauling you up and down that ladder if you hit a day you ain’t feeling well for. ’Sides, privacy’s something I ain’t enjoyed much in camp. It’ll be nice not sharing with other women for once.” She’d reasoned it clear, left him no choice but to agree, and the set of his jaw said his pleasure on that weren’t high.

Sadie frowned, pointed at the bed, and tossed his bedroll at him. “You,” she said, firm and clear, “need rest. Argue how we ought do the accommodating when you ain’t looking ready to drop.”

-

Luck seemed to have finally turned out for them with a positive twist after weeks and months of foul coincidences and shitty situations. Three days at Willowstead and ain’t nothing come up worse than a splinter what pained Sadie to the point of swearing and even that pulled without fuss. The homestead were set up well, kept private by the willows, and it almost seemed like they might get a sense of normal life back the longer they stayed safe there.

Arthur fervently did his share and more of the work needed to get settled, hauling and splitting firewood in early morning and late evening, caring for the horses throughout the day, even helped Sadie shift some crates up and around in the loft to give her more space. Whatever the labour they needed, he done his best to deliver it and that cost him. Each night, with the toll charged heavier and heavier, he felt more tired than the last. He’d hit the sack little more than an hour after whatever supper they scrounged up, then sleep straight through to dawn to do it again. Knew it smart, somewhere in his skull, to slow down and not lose what health he’d gained back, but it weren’t in him to leave it all on her. Already burned him sore that he’d done as much in Valentine; weren’t intent on repeating that here.

Fourth morning, though, he awoke to the crisp bite of frost what caught up to them from Valentine, the claws of it crept into his chest where the embers of the fire failed to chase it away. Sharp difference it came to the warmer days and that triggered a coughing fit he’d not had in a week and more. Arthur pushed himself upright off the mattress, leaned forward as the familiar pain flared up and did its complicated dance with the sharp, cold stab of air that flooded his lungs each time he gasped.

The door pulled open, propped there a moment by her foot as Sadie adjusted the load of firewood in her arms before she stepped in. This delivered a wave of fresh, frigid air that served to do nothing but make the coughing worse and had her hesitate briefly in the doorway.

Arthur waved off the flash of concern what came up in her eyes, focused instead on the in and out motion of air; spittle flecked on his hands from each cough, free of blood at least, the raw tissue of his lungs and throat not as abused as it had been. He heard her move across the room, door kicked closed behind her, and the crackle of wood that caught as it were added to the slumbering fire. A few minutes later, warmth started to seep back into the air and he felt the mattress compress with her weight next to him, hand pressed light on his back. No doubt she’d feel that same rattling in his lungs he’d been hearing louder and louder each day he pushed harder, no doubt she’d be angry at him for it.

“I’m fine,” he said, hoarse.

Her fingers tensed, brief, and her nails dug into the wool of his union suit. “Arthur,” she started. Quiet were her voice, almost like she were resigned to what she’d have to say to contradict his weak lie. “When are you going to stop lying to me?” There carried a sharpness in her question, a challenge of his shrugging off the concern each time it cropped up.

Took him a few breaths to work up the reserve to sit back; her hand dropped from his back as he looked her way. “The hell am I supposed to say?” he challenged in return. “Gee, ain’t dead, but it feels like I should be? Air’s like shards of glass caught in my lungs?” He started coughing again as he let the words slip out. He shook his head, holding her off until he could finish with a shaking breath and an unsteady voice: “I got tuberculosis, Sadie, and it ain’t going away.”

The heavy pause air between them came laden with apprehension, the final calm before the storm that’d been building broke with ill regard.

“If you stopped running yourself ragged, it might!” Sadie ain’t shouted at him much, of late, but this? Loud and angry inclinations came rife in her tone, mustered up and ready to fight him on this point that’d worn sore again and again. “But all you do is say it’s fine and go about your business like it ain’t a thing. You’re a damn fool!”

“Better a fool than-“ He started, defensive.

“What?” Sadie cut him off, her hand moved to grip his shoulder. She wrenched him to face her, making him bear the brunt of this fight that they’d been skirting. “Better a fool than a layabout? An invalid? A waste of space?” Disdainful huff of air and a bitter look that ghosted quick under her anger. “You ain’t none of them things. _None_.” Her fingers were tight, digging into the meat of his shoulder, but he ignored the hurt and looked her square in the eye, bore the verbal beating. “Being sick don’t mean you suddenly got no worth.” Her other hand balled up in a fist and thumped on his chest, at the core of where it ached. “I don’t need to see it to know you ain’t well, Arthur. Just cause I _can’t_ see it don’t make it false. Were it a gunshot wound, you’d let it heal, you’d damn well rest. Why’s it you so afraid of it here?”

Afraid. That single word struck a chord and it rang dissonant, threatened to take the breath right out of him. He’d been afraid, when sick and riding his path to hell, but he’d come to terms with it. Accepted it as an inevitable thing. He’d been dying, no need to feel foul about it and he were tempted to say it.

“Three weeks in Valentine,” was what he said instead, unflinching to her gaze, the pressure of her fist making it hard to breathe. The fire, the fight, all of that he scrounged up in himself and pushed back at her in equal measure. “Three damn weeks of doing nothing and it barely changed!”

Sadie frowned, her eyes narrowed and her anger focused. “Three weeks broke the fever, stopped the bloody cough,” she said, firm. “Made it so’s you could ride again.”

“That’s a damn long time to take getting back on a horse.”

She stared, shocked a moment at where he’d taken that. Glared at him and her hand dropped from his shoulder, the other off his chest; both landed in her lap as she looked away. Looked up as though God had some insights to grant that weren’t the suggestion that she just shoot him and be done with the damn fool bastard. “This’s nothing like falling off one neither,” she said, frustration straining her tone. “You were dead, Arthur. Near as I’ve seen survive and you were sick for months before that. Maybe that proved you weren’t afraid to die then, but why’s it you’re so afraid to _live_ now?”

Goddamn stubborn; her in pushing, him in answering. Why was he afraid? His whole damn world’d been falling apart long before this and less stubborn men would have broken months before Blackwater signalled that clear and final, but it weren’t the only sign. The life he’d grown into weren’t real no more and that made him a relic of how it was, and one best lost with it. All he knew came down to fighting, killing, and robbing; and it were all he’d ever been real good at too. Getting sick’d been a strange curse and blessing both; gave him a way out of the life without cutting or running. Never could leave the life, couldn’t afford stay in it. Maybe it were a cowardly way to sunset his affairs, but it were better than betraying the few moral fabrics and codes that’d justified his existence. Its well’d run dry and no small part of him had felt relief, maybe, that he could get others out without giving over the loyalty, the values he’d thought key. Values that turned out didn’t hold sway over Dutch, all in, but he’d tried, goddamn it.

“I got nothing, Sadie,” he said, slow with each word. Hateful at himself and his failures. “Without Dutch ‘n Hosea, what good’ve I got to share?” Nothing; redundant or rhetorical, whichever it were, it meant he didn’t want no answer from her on it. “What I know ain’t good for this world no more.” His voice was thick and rough, fighting against the narrow passage of air in his lungs to find purchase in speech. He looked away from her then, learning the knots of the wood plank floors, the cut edges of the logs in the wall. “Fighting, killing, and robbing ain’t good for nothing no more. I seen that clear and I ain’t able to change. How many times do I got to say that I’m a bad person before it’ll stick? ‘Cause I ain’t good. I’m a bastard and I done bastard things and I ain’t got a sliver of regret for none of it. My sort are what don’t deserve no happy endings, no good turns. The whole point’s that people hate and revile me, ‘cause I done all the things what’d earn it. Take away the outlaw, the only damn thing I got, and nothing’s left. So maybe it’s that I’s worth nothing good nor more. Better dead than a fool.”

There.

Arthur had said it; vehement and self-venomous, but it were done and he looked to his hands, palms turned up to see the callouses and scars, all them earned and useless now. Words that had been scratched into his journal and scratched out, then added anew those late nights in Valentine when he couldn’t breathe enough to sleep and couldn’t move enough to leave.

Silence came, but it didn’t last near long enough to give him peace. “You are a goddamn fool, Arthur Morgan.” Sadie’s words were clipped, bright with fight and emotion he ain’t heard from her before; she stood up and walked away from him, agitated. He could see it in her hands, fingers clenching and unclenching in spasms of emotion, her borderline loss of control. “An arrogant, ignorant fool!”

Arthur watched her feet moving, pacing around a room that seemed too small to hold their fight within. He didn’t argue the point, yet; knew she ought get out whatever she thought her argument before he made clear again and final that he ain’t got the worth to be wasting her time on. He felt defeated, but that he’d stumbled on something right here; he’d spoken the truth he’d been carrying and she’d have to accept it.

Her bootfalls were heavy, crossing back and forth with loud steps that scuffed the heel now and again as she’d turn about and walk back to the next wall. “You was the first to call out Micah as the bad egg; you went and dragged Swanson back when most of ‘em would’ve looked the other way just to not see him fall apart again; hell, you took Jack out fishing like a father ought when his own was ignoring him! I seen you help just as many folk what don’t deserve it as I’ve seen you hurt them that do. And... hell. You changed since we met, and you done better by it, so don’t like at me about knowing nothing but being bad! Them Hoffmans?”

“Charles,” he cut in gruffly. “I wanted them left and he ain’t allowed it.”

“And you could’ve told him to leave off it, but you didn’t,” she shot back. “I seen you do more for others than I ever seen you do for yourself. You ain’t fooling me. You ain’t fooled Charles or Abigail, and you sure as hell ain’t fooled John.” She stopped and when she spoke again, the familiar rasp of her voice were dry, hurting with a memory. “You didn’t see him, Arthur. That night... It damn near killed him inside when he told me. You were his brother and he hated himself for leaving you. Almost threw away all what you’d done to come back for you. Means you ain’t worthless. You ain’t nothing.”

“Marston’s always been a bigger fool than I ever was,” Arthur said, fighting that stab of ache. Different than the hurt of his lungs and equally unpleasant. “Couldn’t let him die when he’s got the kid. He’s got Abigail.”

“And you claim to be a bad apple.” Her words were spiteful that time, carved from bitterness and cast at him until it pushed him beyond his patience.

“That’s ‘cause I am!” he roared, the hurt of it snapping something in him. He stood up, shouting her way, glaring harsh and unwavering once he met her gaze. “I killed folk to get him out, stole from folk to give him money. I ain’t some saintly sort and I don’t pretend like I could be!”

“I don’t want you to be!” Sadie stood her ground now, fists clenched tight. Her eyes were bright with a fire he didn’t know, didn’t have a name for and he fought for statements to shut her down.

“Then what’s it you want?” Arthur struggled with the words, them lodging in his throat before he could cough them out. “You want to waste your time, then go find John! Tell him all what he could do to be better. Help him figure out how’s he can live normal. I ain’t worth your time. I got nothing, so’s get out and find some meaning ‘cause I ain’t a good one!”

“What I want?”

Some deeply hid fuse burned through her then, touched onto an explosive reaction; her eyes were sharp and steps firm as she walked right up to him, pushed her body up against him. Sadie grabbed his collar and hauled him down closer to her, breathing the words in his face.

“I want _you_ , Arthur Morgan,” she said, hot and angry and deliberate. “Hearty and hale or sick with consumption; it don’t matter to me. It’s what I want and I don’t aim to hide that no more. Don’t matter what you say or think. I’ve seen the good you’ve got squirreled inside you and it don’t make me like you less. I know the bad you done, but I know some real bad’s been done to you. I can accept both of that and still I’ll want you, so shut your goddamn mouth, get your ass back in that bed, and start learning that you got worth to me and that’s got to be enough for us both!”

They stayed that way too many moments too long, her breath washing across his lips. He flinched, or nearly so, at the stark meaning to her words and weren’t sure what to expect when she moved next. Thought she might kiss him with how close they were. Thought, sudden and shocked, that he might want to kiss her right back because she’s been there, with him, through all this and her constancy, her caring hid under that acerbic wit... it’s gotten under his gruff exterior more than he’d let on and he wants to know more of it.

And then-

Sadie drove her fist hard into his stomach, her grip keeping him from doubling full over. Before he could grasp and gasp that, she’d drawn back and punched him hard in the jaw. That was when she let go, pushed him back onto the bed, pain exploding in his jaw and balance lost as he crashed down.

“We’ve a need for supplies, so I’ll be riding into Rhodes,” she said, flat and forced, “and I’m taking Eceni to load up.” Sadie turned and walked to the door, grabbing something as she went. “Don’t you think you can run out on me, Arthur. Don’t you goddamn dare. I swore it true: I ain’t losing a thing no more.”

His wits were starting to settle some as she left the cabin and he realized with a dark curse that she’d taken his gunbelt and boots in hand to ensure he weren’t going nowhere.

“Goddamn it, Sadie!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Deni, this chapter is dedicated to you because it's where the relationship starts breaking ground. Sure, it's in part because she almost broke his jaw, but they're neither of them very good at expressiong their wants and needs. <3
> 
> Are they not just the most romantic couple to ever walk the planet? Fighting and yelling... /swoons
> 
> Willowstead is one of the few locations I'll use that is not in-game; it's located northeast-ish of Rhodes, where in-game you can encounter some willow trees. I have a layout sketched of the area and the cabin, which I'll probably post up on Twitter at some point. When I find the actual... mostly accurate one because apparently I drew it a few times.
> 
> Guess who finished penning in the third notebook worth of ASM draft? This Kichi! We're almost at the end of notebook number one (finally) and looking forward to some of the next big steps in the story.
> 
> Forever and always, thank you for coming by and reading this. It means the world to me.
> 
> \- Kichi @[KichiWhy](https://twitter.com/KichiWhy) (Twitter)


	27. Chapter X: Willowstead – 02: Bait

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's trouble enough brewing when Sadie's set to return and face Arthur after both confessing feelings for him and then laying him out with her fist, but damn if Rhodes doesn't have its own blend of issues to deal with. Including someone that she'd really just rather gut and leave for dead some days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings. **
> 
> ** Look for a bonus update this Monday or Tuesday.

Sadie ignored him when Arthur stumbled out of the house, angrily calling after her for his gear, dazed and coughing from two punches that were not the kindest thing she could have done, but were all that she’d managed in that moment, caught up with emotions she’d been wanting to sort out, but not with the fiery anger that they’d surfaced alongside. When he’d started yelling at her, control’d gone to the wayside in favour of words being spat and spoken what ought have been turned over with thought and care, but she ain’t stopped herself and neither had he and now... shit.

She spurred Zeus into motion, Eceni on a lead and quick to follow. Both’d been readied for the trip, brushed and saddled before she’d brought in the fresh load of firewood. The ride to Rhodes were truly needed, their supplies dwindling and, to the chagrin of two very spoiled horses, no more oatcakes to be found. The morning’s frost served reminder that winter would come even to the warmth of Lemoyne; not near so cold, snowy, nor bitter as further north, but there’d be frost and rain and plenty of reasons to avoid travelling for supplies the later the season stretched.

Thin branches snapped and slipped around her as she ducked under the willow, turned her mare onto the road and encouraged Zeus to pick up a faster pace, to let her escape for now and deal with the rest later. Her knuckles were red where they’d connected with his chin, split against the bone of it and tracing blood between her fingers, but she’d no better idea then on how to drive her point home. She’d never been a romantic, but pragmatic she could run until the damn cows come home and so she went and made her point without, what? The care it deserved? Sadie shook out her hand, flexed her fingers to loose them out from the tight clench of a fist, and she dug out a glove from her satchel to pull on. Switched her hands for gripping the reins and fished out a glove for that one too, hiding from prying eyes the bruising that’d come later.

Two punches, hardest she’d dared hit him, ought keep him dazed out long enough to put distance between them, the road stretched long out behind her before she made some other fool mistake. Like kissing him – that’d occurred to her then, and how hard it’d been to push it down the idea once it set hooks in her heart. Ain’t wanted to move on her feelings like that, not when they was fighting and yelling and... hell, but confessing her wanting him’d been hard enough, broke past her lips despite the idea it weren’t right to say. At least she’d not complicated it worse with a kiss, though she licked her lips now and ducked her head down, doing her damn best not to regret it.

Her face ran hot, flushed and angry. All they’d been through and it’d never occurred to him what else might’ve motivated her other than stubborn resilience? She weren’t no saint neither. Learned this past year how quick she could shed the moral fibers that held society together, how easy it were to do whatever it took to make sure she got some end of the bargain of life that weren’t full shit. Something to show for it and Arthur were fool enough to not see it were _him_.

Sadie cursed as she came up on the main road, reluctant in letting up on the pace to lower her profile and appease Zeus, who never much appreciated short bursts of hard effort over the longer endurance of a day’s ride. Willowstead were tucked away with thick overgrowth offering privacy, a niche she’d no intent to violate with too much haste. They had a solid chance at laying low there, so she done her best to compose herself, make it appear that she were on some regular outing and not that she were run from problems equally caused by her own fool actions.

The ride gave her space, time to calm the rampant beating of her heart, suppress the anger triggered each time what Arthur beat himself down, deprecated his worth when it were writ plain and clear to her eyes. There’d yet to be a time when he ain’t worn his blinders to what he done and what he inspired to them that cared about him. Never admitted that it were when he picked others around him up that he showed his best, that he fared his best. The same loyalty that near killed him were equal strength of character and weakness of worth and damn but how to prove it to him.

Distractedly, she scratched at her side, an itch from the healed gash that persisted as the tender new skin scarred into something tougher. Beneath her duster and clothes, all that remained were the mottled red mark that stretched along her abdomen and the memory of it, the hurt and the anger and then how Arthur’d done his best to mend it and make sure she survived alongside him. She done her best to keep the mended wound clean and stretched, avoiding an immutable and stiff scar by his care, and yet the bastard still questioned his worth.

-

Late morning brought out the sun and burned out the frost’s final traces around the time that Rhodes came into sight, the same half silhouette of a town as they’d seen before. The scarcity of folk noted their last time through seemed even less today, mind there being a cluster of folk over outside the churchyard, congregated and milling without the reverential calm she’d expect after a faith’s service. Curiosity blended with caution as she maneuvered closer, eyes alert for what’d drawn them out.

Turned out the church’s unfortunate decorations were what had them milled about, an energy thrumming through the crowd what spit out embers of fear and uncertainty. Ones that threatened a fire if it hit tinder-dry tempers or long held fears. Sadie checked, casual and careful, for hostiles in the group – them folk that might be milling, but with purpose and placement what spoke to plans, persistence – but all she saw were farmers and business folk standing with skin washed out and eyes wide. Hard to believe this kind of nervous pressure came without design, without some hand dealing the cards, but weren’t no eyes looking anywhere except to the church.

Couldn’t blame them, given the sight; Sadie stopped the horses and sat back in the saddle, looking at the two bodies what hung from nooses slung from knotted ropes off the rooftop cross, mouths gagged and limbs bound and souls long vacated. Each of them dangled with wide eyes what were blind in death, each of them with heels what kicked back against the wooden planks of the building as their bodies swung idly, above half-dried paint what read Gray under one and Braithwaite under the other. Gruesome sight, but the chill down her spine came from the names, too easily recalled as two of them ‘great’ families of Lemoyne what’d been broken by Dutch and Hosea’s conning and conniving not long enough ago.

“What happened to them folk?”

The first question rippled through the crowd and wild theories chased in its wake as they tried, en masse, to make sense of the spectacle crafted for what seemed to be their eyes alone. Ducked heads and whispered fears lay a discomfited backdrop, the nervous energy milled over and again without purchase or definition grasped by it.

Sadie looked away from the corpses, being that they were dead and weren’t nothing to be done about that; she searched instead for eyes that lingered on the reaction engendered by the gruesome scene. Checked the lines of the horizon too for shadows of those that may have wrought it and waited upon its discovery for their next move. Scene like this screamed message to her, much as Kieran’s corpse ridden mangled into Shady Belle had been a herald of attack. Her hand rested on the butt of her revolver, alert and ready to draw, but no eyes no forms drew definition in her search.

“Folks, break it up!” The confident tones of authority struck the tension, a hammer to shatter the glass with its precise application of force; local law’d come up and announced themselves, no doubt the new sheriff and couple deputies to sort out the mess. “There may be plenty to see here, but none of you need see it!” She glanced their way, brief and made sure to seem nervous in looking to the church again almost immediate; stiff and professional folk surrounded the new sheriff, the no-nonsense promise of justice whispered of in Valentine shown, at surface, as truth.

Mindful of the intended crowd control and the risk of being asked questions to what she didn’t care to know the answers to, Sadie turned Zeus away and headed down through town to its far limits with a wary eye. Then she turned back towards the general store, absent the few customers and stragglers of the normal sorts of day, and decided to stay with the plan, get the supplies, and avoid meeting what replaced the defunct Grays as law enforcement.

Kept herself alert all through town, unable to shake the wariness that the bodies were a funnel of focus, to keep eyes upon the churchyard while some place else turned out the target. Distraction tactic and the sort she’d’ve considered if there were a need, though this one went too far into morbid for it to appeal. Wondered, brief, if the names were meant to play message more than ply at the familiar fear or if this were one eerie coincidence. That McIntosh’d told them that there were new players in Lemoyne, them Cartwrights, making their prowess known in the wake of the disgraced, devastated families. Might be them, then, to be desecrating the proud memory of familial lineages.

Most folk that she passed were subdued, glancing down towards the spectacle with nervous eyes. Murmurs trailed off into fearful unrest, proving the scene at least effective if it were the distraction she suspected it to be. Sadie kept her eyes moving over the town and its folk, searching for trouble and hoping to hell that it ain’t about to be found.

Then she saw them faces of trouble spread here and again; some over near the wool mill, scattered on the steps of the hotel, even a couple leaned up next to the sheriff’s office. Five or six folk staggered along the street, some leaning and smoking, another drinking from a bottle held loose in his hand. They seemed each uncaring of the talk of the town, no eyes strayed or necks stretched to catch sight of what foul circumstance’d painted sin on the town’s faith.

Sadie kept her head angled to the general store, eyes flit back and again to check that she ain’t seen things that weren’t there, and each time tightened the certainty that the church stood as part of some greater scheme she don’t have full view of. The store itself had no wagons pulled up and none of them questionably focused types littering the bench steps, giving her the idea that it might be one safe place for the now and that served her purpose well. Sadie hitched the horses around the side and paused a moment, shading her eyes with her hand like she were taking one last craning look at the town, a sweeping glance that counted five that time, postures tense and forced to look calm as they waited for some signal she’d no idea to the nature of.

Trouble brewing.

There weren’t no shaking the feeling that it were a matter of time alone before whatever intent it was played out; she’d sensed this kind of tension in camp the nights before a job. That ready anticipation what spoke of guns, threats, and a take worth risking lives over. Sadie kept that in mind, moved quick and steady up the steps into the store. Plucked from her pocket a small stretch of paper, the list of provisions needed sketched out between her and Arthur’s hands as they found a need over the past few days.

Ducked inside and away from the milling uncertainty of the townfolk, the store itself presented as quiet and untroubled when she pushed the door open. The pleasant peal of a small bell and the slightly dusty smell of dry goods greeted her, followed by the attention of the sole clerk – which quick turned to regret in her mind.

“Welcome! What can I do for you?”

That voice were like cutglass on her ears, a tone and sort she’d been set on forgetting, but a glance showed her that the idle hope had no bearing on the stark reality. Sadie sighed and cursed her luck, turned her full attention inside at the rotund and belly-aching jackass she’d wanted to cut into roast pork or salt into bacon plenty more than the once that Arthur saved him from it. “What in the hell are _you_ doing here, Pearson?” she asked.

Balding and bland like his infamous stews, Pearson squinted at her from behind the counter, like he didn’t recognize her after over a month’s absence or couldn’t quite make out her features. Maybe it were his mechanism of self defense to be playing the fool; weren’t no secret Dutch took unkindly to people what left the gang or betrayed his trust and he’d fare better by the stranger card than running again on pure instinct. And hate she could to acknowledge it, but she’d wager more on it being a false ignorance that better matched the wily cook; she’d plenty of disdain for his bluster, sure, but the man’d survived naval deployment and living rough with outlaws ready to kill over too small of things. He had tricks and that same survival instinct as the rest of them, only hid it under blunt humours and dull edges, and that made him dangerous enough to not skirt around this façade.

Rather than play to the cards, she called him out for the ploy. “Don’t play dumb with me,” she warned, her tone made clear that ignorance were not about to be his virtue.

The man tried to hold it a second longer, then his face wrinkled in displeasure and he sighed, shook his head. “You can’t really blame me, Mrs. Adler,” he replied, rubbing at the back of his neck in a telling show of nerves. “Folk like us... After what happened? It’s hard to know what to expect.”

“Oh, I can blame you plenty,” she returned, walking to the counter that he half-hid his bulk, laying down the list of what she needed. “You and me? We never had a good slate to start with.”

Sweat shone on his forehead and he cleared his throat, readying up the dreaded question: “Then was it Dutch that sent you?” Resignation rich in his tone at the irony, both for the short duration of his escape and of the one sent to hunt him down.

Sadie laughed, loud and sharp and clear in her disdain for the idea. The sound startled him, set him skittish and threw him a step back, casting her a wary look. “No,” she said, flat. “I ain’t riding with Dutch no more.” Though, truth told, she ain’t never really ridden with him. Arthur and Abigail and Charles and John, but never the choice nor the prime in Dutch’s eyes and that’d saved her, she supposed.

“Then why are you here?” asked with suspicious eyes that checked the door, out the window for signs of the trouble he feared she heralded.

Tapped the list with her finger and pushed it across the counter to him without so much as a backwards glance to suggest he had reason to be nervous. “Coincidence,” she assured him, and that were sour taste enough to swallow. “Ain’t no way I’d be looking for you, even if Dutch _had_ sent me. I got bigger fish to fry.” And any world where she’d actively seek out this blowhard, frankly, would never exist. “I need supplies and this here’s a store, ain’t it?”

Some of that wary tension started to bleed away and he straightened up, latched to a familiar concept that didn’t mean taking a side nor starting a fight. Closer to his element than matching wits with her, a battle she’d make sure he always lost. “Well, then,” he spoke up after clearing his threat, “that’s something we can help with.”

“We?” she echoed, glancing about and seeing no others.

Pearson’s shoulders stiffened and his eyes went a bit dull, a bit broken in spirit. “This isn’t exactly _my_ store,” he said. “Yet,” added with his clear intent to own it at some point. “I didn’t get out with much, had to start somewhere.”

“You ain’t the only one,” she muttered before she caught herself and gestured back to the list, the matter at hand. Sadie refused to feel pity for Pearson on this or any other point. He’d been smart to get out, get away, and there weren’t enough that could’ve said the same.

He stilled and went quiet, math working in his head as he saw the markings. “This here’s... a lot,” Pearson started saying, eyes sketching back and forth over the entries. Briefly, she wondered and worried if there were too many words in Arthur’s hand what might alert him, but no dawning light shone upon his features and the secret of his survival seemed safe a moment longer.

“I’m aiming to ride out the winter in a real low profile,” she said, leaning forward on her arms, resting her weight against the counter. “You saw what was happening up in Beaver Hollow,” added quietly. “You blame me for thinking on disappearing a spell?” Unsaid and yet unmissed were that he’d done the same and sooner than she.

Pearson considered it, then nodded quick and shallow. “That’s fair,” he agreed, “but I don’t have all of this on hand. It’ll take a few days to get it from Saint Denis.”

Sadie shrugged, unbothered by the idea. “Give me enough for a few days,” she suggested. “The rest...” Shit, what to do about that. Eceni and Zeus could handle a few days worth of kit, maybe a month’s, but she’d listed up what’d get them through four months, same as she’d done before the winter freeze’d set in at her ranch and leave them near stranded until the thaw. Only then she had her own wagon and team to haul it, whereas now she had somewhat less. “Well, we’ll have to sort out how to get that delivered,” she finished with a shrug.

“You don’t got a wagon?” asked, a disgruntled veil on it.

“Like I said,” she said, defensive, “you ain’t the only one what got out with nothing.” Sadie knocked her gloved knuckles on the countertop, running ideas quick to sort through to ones that’d get supplies without leaving hints on where she’d hid up, nor who she’d done it with – if Arthur even stuck around, after their altercation. “Ain’t this store own a wagon?” she asked. “Load it up, let me ride it out. I’ll bring it back, good as new.”

Pearson winced. “That I can’t promise,” he said, scratching at his forearm with short, dirty nails. “The owner’s stingy about the equipment.” He paused, canted his head to the side and looked at her with a knowing sort of frown. “Apparently, there was a gang here stealing wagons and shucking them off at a fence up north a few months back.” Dryly stated and obvious that it had been their own crew that caused the problem. “Makes folk around here nervous.”

Sadie raised an eyebrow, wondered brief when the shadow of the outlaw habit would damn well stop haunting them. “Then haul it out to Clemens Point,” she said, sudden and struck by the idea. “I’ll take it from there, unload, and return it. Then you ain’t knowing where I’m at and you ain’t just giving away a wagon.”

Paranoia and caution walked hand-in-hand; these were things Pearson knew but, for once, it seemed he ended up on the same page as her. “Alright, Mrs. Adler,” he agreed, holding out his hand to shake on it. She met it, closing the deal, mild in her surprise that his grip weren’t all limp fish-like. Strength there, part of the wiliness and cunning she ain’t liked according him, but seemed she ought to in some measure. Separated from the protections of the gang pushed away and pulled out different behaviours to keep alive; in her, made her aggression run hot and rougher than ever. In Pearson, it cut him from the weaker act of cook, showed hints of the hardness that’d served him in the navy, served him before Dutch come and saved him like he saved all them others with his lauded and gilded ideals.

“Clemens Point in two days?” she proposed, wanting to get this done and get out before whatever the hell was happening in Rhodes broke loose.

Pearson turned that over, nodded slow. “That I think I can do,” he said grudgingly. Like as not, she’d have to compensate him well for sticking his neck out on this. Given their history, helping her ain’t quite a high priority she’d put on his plate of things to carry, but she didn’t make that clear just yet.

“It’s appreciated, Mr. Pearson,” she said with a nod of her head. Sadie pulled out some of the _recompense_ from her satchel, counted out a couple hundred to put towards the bill and lay them on the counter. The rest she’d hand over once she saw the wagon loaded with supplies in two days time, plus any padding in thanks for his assistance.

“Now, that ruckus outside... it ain’t natural,” she continued, careful in watching him, a measure to see how much he knew or thought to know. “You toss me a couple bags of oats and some food, and I’ll get out of your dwindling hairline before hell breaks loose.”

A sour expression surfaced for the line at his expense, but his eyes checked quick the dust-mottled windows out the front and she knew then he were as suspicious of trouble as she’d concluded to be. “Those bodies a distraction then?” he asked, casual. As though anyone might talk about gruesome ways to waylay eyes over a commercial transaction. “Classic tactic,” added as he crouched behind the counter, the shuffle of cans and bottles harbinger of there being. “Dark though. Dutch never stooped that way, but Colm...”

That triggered the angry sting and she bit back the sharp truth that Colm O’Driscoll had stretched his neck too long and she’d been one to make sure it held, watching them last panicked breaths befare the noose snapped tight. Sadie took in a breath, tempered herself some away from striking him upside the head for mentioning Colm. “You got a wager on who’s responsible?” she figured instead it best to check, see what fresh hell could be cropped up here.

Pearson went quiet, took her query seriously and that told her something had to be up, to have to consider it. He shrugged, rubbed his hand over the shining bald patch that stretched over his head and few strands of hair bothered to meet his fingers in the motion. “There’s this family pushing hard into all the gaps that, well... we left behind. Their name’s Cartwrights. Staging a lynching? I wouldn’t put it past them. If you’re going to be holing up here, you best watch out for them, Mrs. Adler.”

-

Sadie headed back out of Rhodes not more than an hour later, supplies strapped to Eceni and the mare as unbothered by being tethered to Zeus now as during the ride in. Bustle and hustle still crowded the church end of town, but the five she’d counted out as strangers to be watching had moved, closed up their ranks some. She urged Zeus to pick up the pace, holding tight to a calm visage as she passed through town; forced herself to look to the church again, made it seem like it were the foremost thing on her mind and not the well-oiled guns and deadly looking bodies lining up to take action.

The thought rose brief that she ought do something about a it, but then she realized there weren’t a thing that Rhodes had done for her without it being paid for or uninvited. There weren’t no folk, excepting Pearson, that she even knew there and, frankly, she weren’t about to risk nothing for that man. Sadie put her conscience aside, forced it so, and determined that her risking her neck on a suspicion of trouble would be too visible to make worth the effort.

Despite that, crawling along her spine came the certainty that some sort of significant withdrawal was about to be unwillingly made here, but they were far from the bank and that cast shade on it. They were clustered all near the sheriff’s office and the doctor’s one now and she hazarded maybe they was here to save a comrade from the noose. Then why kill two folk and stage their corpses? Why funnel attention away from this end of town?

The questions what surrounded that were marked to be less than important when she encountered the last clue what cinched her certainty of a job on the cusp of being run; she crossed paths with a pair riding in as she rode north and there were danger and familiarity ridden hand-in-hand.

Danger came from the first, a woman dressed in black and white that rode a roan mare with comfortable ease. She had a focused look in her eyes and a bandana curved close around her neck; all too ready to pull up, obscure her features from the law-abiding folk, including the inset scars that went from her jaw and across to her temple, as though something had struck her with force and split the skin of her face, roughly patched back together and held there by determination.

Familiarity came from the second, a man riding a horse’s length behind her, hunched and uncomfortable with an arm bound in a sling against his chest and shoulders slumped with spirits lower than an outlaw with a noose pulled tight about their neck. The broken posture played at odds with the cheery fellow she had met him to be, and she carefully searched his expression for some clue to what were at hand. Sadie knew him to be McIntosh from the stagecoach, but that recognition’d come with effort. Since their last (and meant to be final) interaction, he’d come intimate with the blunt end of something and that intimacy’d beaten his features out of the alignment she’d known. The bridge of his nose lay crooked and swollen, the shadows under his eyes painted yellow and brown by fading bruises. The false smile he wore faltered with each step of his horse and some few more teeth were absent than before.

Then McIntosh proved he knew Sadie from the stagecoach when his eyes met hers, his going wide with shock and his weak smile faltering, jaw dropping without voice finding purchase. With Zeus moved past the woman – who she suspected of being with that Cartwrights gang she’d heard too damn much about – Sadie raised her hand and placed on finger on her lips to suggest clear that silence were the option he needed to take here. He nodded shakily, no doubt thinking to what she’d done to those that wronged her at the robbery. She smiled, patting the butt of her revolver, reassuring him that his silence were the right course, and he ducked his head, urged his horse to continue past her.

Then, coming clear of Rhodes’s boundaries, she picked up the pace and started back towards Willowstead, intent to keep away from this trouble and knowing she damn well had a worse mess she’d made to deal with there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Split update this week, y'all, and I'm sorry about that. I prefer to get two chapters out each week, but am running on fumes and the engine just can't function like this.
> 
> Life's taking a stroll through hell right now and though there's been plenty of positives, including connecting awesomely with a new friend, there's also been a lot of drag that's landed me a hell of a migraine that is not going away. Mon pére is in the hospital to remove a hip due to infection and he's due home tomorrow (until next surgery in six weeks), C-19 is surging bad where I live and my lungs are too shit to be able to risk it, I'm dealing with a weeklong gap in the meds that keep me stable, and just fuck if I can't really focus.
> 
> Aiming for positive! I really like the stuff that's coming up and I plan to use my birthday tomorrow to type up the fun and hopefully get the chapter out by Tuesday at the latest. Back to the full double chapter update next Sunday, promise.
> 
> ilall and g'night!
> 
> \- Kichi @[KichiWhy](https://twitter.com/KichiWhy) (Twitter)


	28. Chapter X: Willowstead - 03: Trust Issues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sadie and Arthur begin the arduous process of actually talking about their emotions. It goes about as well as we can all imagine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.
> 
> ** This is part two of the great split update of December 2020. Back to schedule on Sunday!

With Rhodes and its storm left to break behind her, the ride back turned her thoughts towards to the lingering one between her and Arthur, forced calm by the day apart and too ready to crash down again once she spoke anew. She’d been reckless and selfish, determined to have some control over life after its reins had been stolen from her; used that to reason out why she’d pulled him from death’s hands, how long she’d kept with him since, even to how close she’d let herself come to feeling things for him that were _more_. She’d lost enough in life and weren’t keen on repeating that again and so regret refused to take hold when she thought to what to do here. They’d talk and they’d shout; all she could do were brace herself for that crash of thunder to roll over her and do her best to fight back against it and not withdraw statements that’d been based in full honesty, for all they’d been said in the heat of anger.

Sadie’d always run hot her whole life and too familiar were the consequences she’d face for it. Jake, rest his memory, had tempered her some and kept them both stable those few years they had. Without him, she were a goddamn wildfire, all scorched earth and shouted words. She’d no smooth touch like Hosea, to give meaning where the mind ran lost. No dreamer’s fantasy, like Dutch, to lift with inspiration and ideals. She had her life, her guns, and her temper; the three came together in a volatile, explosive blend. That’d have to do when it come time to sort this trouble, this mess she’d made, out with Arthur.

Darkness were full fallen by the time Sadie rode back into the cover of stooped willows, branches brushing their leaves low on the ground and half obscuring her tracks as she made them. She dipped her head, avoiding her face becoming intimate with a low-hanging branch near the path, and looked for signs or signals of the discord she’d wrought. Quiet and calm dusted the clearing in equal measure, disrupted only by the faint glow cast from the cabin’s windows, sign that fire had been maintained in the hearth throughout the day. This proof, or suggestion, that Arthur at least had stayed to yell at her one more time before their souring argument split them apart were something comforting that the day’d otherwise not given her. It drove home relief so sharp it were like some stake put through her heart, disproving them anxieties that he’d have found some way out and made good on it.

Sadie kept her head high as she road Zeus and led Eceni into the small barn, felt no burn of eyes tracking her movements. No accusatory looks or angry shouts greeted her, mind that she’d prefer that direct confrontation. Some part flared worry, that he’d found a way to run out on her and left the fire as decoy, but she forced down the fear. Made herself care for the horses, then unload the supplies; the few bags of feed for the horses she left stored up in the loft, away from prying mares. Then she stored the dry goods in a crate; bundles with salted meats and dried out foods to be loaded into stews, grains to be boiled into palatable blends. This she set at the door at the door, ready to be brought to the cabin.

Zeus and Eceni she brushed and stabled, each with a share of oats and fresh water to see them through the night. The supplies she hefted in her arms, carrying them across the clearing to the well and drew one final fresh bucket of water. All this she balanced, and her hands held also the loop of Arthur’s gunbelt, fingers gripped his boots from where she’d hid them in the barn the length of the day, as she moved into the cabin.

The low burning embers of the fireplace cast faint light as she stepped into the open interior. The surge of relief she felt when she saw Arthur, asleep on his back on the bed, made her flush; the fear of losing his presence as palpable as the one of losing his life and damn if she could easily admit that. She pushed that, swallowed it down, and shook her head.

Altercation’d been saved by his being asleep; disappointing though that felt, she set the supplies on the table. Moved quick and quiet to return his boots to the bedside, hang the gun belt on the bedpost without waking him. The glance she gave his features showed steady enough breathing, the gravelled undertone of the illness louder than she liked, but weren’t wet or coughing and that she took, held onto as she moved about the cabin, storing supplies in a rough attempt at being organized.

To her surprise, he’d left a pot hung by the fire with remnants of thick stew inside, boiled down and dried on the sides, but still edible. A tin plate on the counter lay ready, the expectation clear that she ought avail herself of real food before turning in. Sadie felt the hunger, sharp and demanding; she banked the fire careful before two ladles of stew found its way onto the plate in her hands. Mindful of her balance, she mounted the ladder to the loft one-handed.

Left the trouble for the morning, determined more to have him rest than have it sorted immediate.

-

Sun were bright in the sky, the morning passed nearer to noon before her boots showed on the ladder; Sadie’d yielded the cabin to him for more than just her time in Rhodes, leaving him to wake, find his gear returned, and their supplies fortified; all this before having to address the lingering dull ache in his jaw from her harsh actions. The pain of it ain’t held the way the anger had, his day run hot over all the words and actions taken before she’d ridden out, intent to leave him stranded here. That his satchel’d been left gave him his journal, at least, and he’d filled pages with words and frustrated sketches as he stewed, brewed on their argument, her points, her admissions. Questioned himself equal to her, worth what she’d claimed to feel, and that had served to dampen the rage with the uncertainty. Time went on long enough that, come morning, the fuse of his anger’d burned down to manageable, reason trying to find purchase in his thoughts, and seemed he could tend the issue without running straight to explosive on sight of her.

Arthur sat at the table with his back to the wall; wore his full gear, boots and gunbelt included, for it sure seemed he couldn’t trust her not to use them, or their lack, against him. The cigarette he’d lit were burned down to a third and he tipped ash into the small glass tray littered with burned out stubs and crumpled rolling papers ruined when he’d tried to smoke through the worst of his temper. “Morning,” he said, the word drawn out slow and clear. Weren’t no cough with it that time, too much of his night spent sleeping to give it traction again.

Not one hint nor hesitation slowed her as she come down the last rungs, her posture straight and when she turned, everything about her seemed unconcerned. Unafraid when she saw him, though he’d put it closer to defiant the way her back stiffened and her chin’d angled up, guarded and ready for trouble.

There were a tin plate with boiled oats, canned fruits mixed in, set on the table; cold remnants from the breakfast he’d made hours earlier. He’d dished it for her then and now tapped it, pushing it towards the other chair at the table. The meaning clear: Sit down, eat something, and be ready because it were time to talk. There were two things they needed to deal with, but there were only one right then he needed sorted.

Sadie glanced to the food and gesture both; but she held off moving some few seconds more. Trepidation ain’t what slowed her, the woman near incapable of fear, but caution were equally foreign to consider in the context of her, though that’d be what he saw. She knew they weren’t done from yesterday; stalled the day and night already meant it had to come to head soon before the embers of that fire died out or festered.

Head held high, the danger of pride shadowed in it, she crossed the few steps and took up the chair. “Appreciate it,” she said, elbows leaned on the table as her fingers closed around the handle of the spoon. The knuckles of her one hand were bruised still, a few red splits in the skin earned when she’d struck his jaw with force enough to leave it ghosted with a bruise. “This ain’t poisoned or nothing?” asked without venom herself. An allusion to their fight, the consequences of it.

“No,” he said, resting his wrists on the table’s edge, stubbing out the cigarette with the remains of the rest. “I don’t go for underhanded like that.” They were both talking careful, holding their cards close, but she had laid her hand out yesterday and it were only his cards that remained the unknown.

A mouthful taken to taste and swallow, then she pushed the food from one side of the plate to the other to expend tense energy even as it coiled between them. Sadie eyed him; dared him with her silence to speak aloud the connection between underhanded means and what she’d done to him.

Arthur went more direct than that. He’d had the day and half the night to work it through. To hate himself, to call himself the fool for near forgetting what he were and what he weren’t. So wrapped up in the gang that he’d not looked at himself nor his worth as anything more than numbers jotted down in the camp ledger; reinforced when he stayed away too long and the first greeting back came with the playful queries of what he’d brought to better them all. Dutch most of all, plying him to be the example and keep the camp stocked, the money box filled, until Arthur found himself keeping mere fractions of his take, chasing that gratitude from his mentor that grew increasingly weak, increasingly sparse no matter what blood, sweat, or bills he contributed.

Even now, told and scolded to what Sadie perceived and pushed at him, he weren’t full sold on that worth being much, but to find some way to express that without inciting an all-out brawl between them seemed a challenge insurmountable.

First, though.

“You ever take my horse, guns, or boots,” he said, clearly raising one finger for each point. Arthur took a slow breath, watched her stiffen at each item listed. “You ever take them again and it don’t matter how much help or hinder you done for me, Sadie Adler. I’ll shoot you dead.” There were a hint of his old strength there, his anger quick to boil, fast to fight; the way he preferred to deal with problems using force so there’d be none left standing to try fancy words.

Weren’t no laugh that met his threat, but a bitter shadow of amusement what played in her eyes, brief and broken. “I ain’t afraid of dying,” she replied, reminder served in a dry tone. She lay the spoon down to the side of the plate, seemed almost relaxed that this would be their focus. The easier of the two problems and one she sat ready to counter. “Ain’t been afraid since before you and I shot up them raiders together.”

He frowned, recalled her bloodlust and his readiness to curse how quick she’d come to killing and, in that, begging fate to see her killed. “That’s come to be a real pain,” he muttered.

This triggered a pause, her eyes come over cold while she traced the meaning and weighed how much she wanted to challenge them; seemed that the issue dulled her attention, her guard lowered some as she sighed, the sound of one tiredly familiar. “You’s going to say I’m reckless, headstrong, and all that,” she predicted. “That not fearing death ain’t the same as running straight to the devil’s embrace; that I ought be smarter about the fights I pick before they pick me.” She shrugged up a shoulder, put forth that casual grasp of it. “All them things’ve been said before, and by plenty more than just you.”

“And you ain’t changed,” were his challenge.

“No, I ain’t.” Sadie picked up the spoon again, her grip tighter than it needed to be. Defiance again; she’d found strength in being this way, and that strength’d grown in her, finding purchase in it where societal norms would otherwise see her waylaid, pushed aside in matters. Made her a damn force of nature, impossible to shift, and that kept putting them at odds.

“Then how’s it you and I are meant to make this work?” he challenged, gesturing at the space between them. “You piss off the wrong folk when you’ve a gang to run with? There’s degrees of protection; guns behind you, guards out front. Do it when we got just two of us and we’re both dead by next week.”

“What’s it matter, Arthur?” she asked, taking up a spoonful of the oats. “You keep pushing like you done, then you’re dead and I got nothing left.” Sadie emptied it back onto the plate and dropped the spoon onto the remnants of it. “Then it don’t matter who I piss off, because I’ll kill them fast as they kill me and this whole damn thing’s sorted.”

An impasse, risen solid as stone and yet made of nothing but air, stood between them. Arthur scowled, tempted to snap that she got it wrong without having the answer himself. Exasperation coursed through him and he felt the beating of his heart come loud, a pressure up in his ears as he fought some instinct to shut this down and just walk. “If you ain’t afraid of dying and I ain’t afraid of working,” he stated through gritted teeth, “how’s we supposed to _trust_ each other to not damn well do either?”

Arthur didn’t want to lie idle; the idea of it had his hands balled into fists and knuckles drawn pale with the pressure of it, but he also didn’t want her dying on him, even if the threat’d come from his hand this time ‘round. Wouldn’t always and he fought the ashen taste that put on his tongue when he thought to her facing down bullets, defiant and bold, without him there to watch her back. After what she’d said and done, it weren’t in him to leave her to that self-destructive cant, not while he struggled with piecing together how Arthur damn Morgan could’ve become something she wanted. Not until he had that sorted out and, some small voice in him, not even beyond that.

The words knocked that indifference out of her, eyes narrowed and bright as she took them in, tore them apart same as he had hers all through the day and half the damn night. She flexed her fingers, bits of the split skin tearing, the healing skin easily pulled apart. “You’d’ve ridden out after me,” she said, looked straight at him when she done it too. “Come back exhausted and coughing, the fever burning hot again.” She paused, noticed the shine of her knuckles, wiped at them with an irritated huff of breath, then her attention turned back on him, on her point. “Where’s the trust supposed to start? Am I supposed to trust you to run right back into the grave?” Somewhere along there, the words broke with her voice, sharp and final as she glared at him, rubbed and worried her other hand at the rawness of her fingers. “Tell me, Arthur, because I ain’t got it in me to see that twice.”

“I ain’t going back on my word, Sadie,” he replied, tense. “Promised you and Charles I’d do my best to mend, but that don’t mean I do nothing either. It don’t mean you do everything.” He pointed gestured out towards the door. “I could’ve ridden out yesterday,” he said, a low growl.

“Ain’t never said you couldn’t,” she replied, seemed able to get herself grounded some in them words, the break in her tone smoothed over as she continued: “Only that you wouldn’t.” Sadie thought a moment, like she were forming words and ways of explaining it after all them other attempts failed. Struggling because she kept herself blunt and honest, not twisting of meanings and statements, but that meant harsh and abrasive all the same. It were one of the reasons he damn well _liked_ her, because he could trust what words come out of her mouth even when she weren’t mad as a hornet. “When I’ve gone to do something, it don’t mean I think you can’t, you damn fool. But, it means I figure it better for me to go it that way.”

“It ain’t in me to lie idle, Sadie.” Frustrated warning that it were, with them come back around to the same heated stalemate that brought on the fighting, the shouting. Frustrated too that he needed to do his share, ever the workhorse worth nothing but his strength, what it did for others.

“You don’t need to!” she snapped, suddenly sharp; all teeth what were tearing savagely into his resolve. “All’s you need to do is be smart about it. This sickness, it took your strength down, and you’ve got to measure it. Running it to nothing day in and out ain’t going to build it back. We both know that.” A pause, the first hint of a desperate thought. “Don’t we?”

Arthur weren’t sure he did and that drew him back to the same defensive words that’d been thrown at him time and again, thrown at others around him when the camp’s box needed to be lined between takes or the stew wanted for meat in the dead of winter. “It’s always been about doing the fair share,” he said, crossing his arms on his chest.

Sadie stopped herself from whatever next words tried to cut away that armour; she drew a breath, drew on some memory to calm herself before the fire could flare up further, and in that found something different to say. “You know,” she said, reaching out for the plate again, fingertips toying at the lip of it. “When we was up in Colter, then over at the Overlook, weren’t much I done to help around camp. No one tore me down on it. No one tossed me out.”

“You was grieving,” he replied, firm in that conviction like it explained everything. “Ain’t no one expected you to do much at the start.”

“Then how’s it you can’t let yourself be the one grieving now, Arthur?” Sadie pulled the plate towards herself again, grasped at the spoon and dragged it through the soft mush. “All’s what happened... You good as died. Lost your family too. Ain’t me expecting you to do more. You got to grieve.”

Arthur went quiet there, her words striking chords he did not enjoy hearing. This damn year’d taken the lives of half the gang, stole the two what’d been like fathers to him, ripped away the calm security he’d had in being a degenerate outlaw. The tuberculosis made it clearer, made him face it so’s he could die with a clear enough conscience, but even that’d been taken from him now. It lodged tight in his chest and throat, made him want to walk away here and now, but like a bullet in a bloody wound, they had to dig this out before it went sceptic on them. Before it festered and ruined what they’d been building.

“I don’t-“ A stall in the words, loathing of the fear that he weren’t enough thickening his words until they caught in his throat. “I don’t know how else to do it,” came finally, an effort to choke them out leaving him with a heavy weight in that admission. “I ain’t Uncle; can’t sit back and let others work. I don’t got the masterful charisma like Dutch or the cunning like Hosea. I got the strength in my back and shoulders, the bad things I know how to do, and ain’t more than that to me.”

Discarded again went the plate as Sadie pushed it away, shifted her chair over to his corner of the table. There were a strange pain etched on her face, sympathetic of sorts, like she were familiar to this, but in reverse. All she’d known was honest work and now, well... she’d all the makings of a fine outlaw any innocent citizen ought fear the arrival of, but changes like that scarred the soul. Leaning forward, she reached out and hesitated a moment before she put a hand on his crossed arms, like she could instill reason in him with that touch.

“You’ve the best eye on rifles,” she said, careful and casual to start. He always turned skittish under praise, ain’t no secret there; even those few words had him tense, wanting to push it away with derision and denial. “You know how to get folk to talking what you ain’t never met. I seen you being kind your way; that time you come back to camp and straight to Mary-Beth with that pen? She ain’t stopped talking about it for weeks, Arthur, and you weren’t seeing the way it brightened up her day any time she used it. She ain’t the only one you done it for either, you done it for everyone and them acts are a sign you’ve got the capacity to be more than what Dutch made you. And you ain’t dull neither; I seen you play equal cunning to Hosea, only you ain’t never let yourself see it. Folk looked to you on plans and jobs; they knew that it weren’t possible unless you were at the reins.” Sadie squeezed his arm, reassuring, and that desire to draw back from the praise kept growing, but she kept him there and he made himself stay. “Why’s it hard to see that?”

Arthur knew why; knew that he’d done the good turns and believed himself worth something for some years long, only it never come out right. That every time he found something what gave him value outside the columns of Dutch’s ledgers, it turned out a damn tragedy in its wake. That he caused a damn trail of tragedies in his wake. Made his voice lock up to think on it, eyes burn with the savage hate of it, of what he done and why he weren’t more than muscle and rage, “You don’t know what happened before,” he warned her, a shake of his head. Arthur shifted his arms to break the contact and pushed the plate back at her to keep eating.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Split update, part 2! We're getting there, through their reasons and denials and misunderstanding, wo are making progress to Sadie and Arthur maybe not getting into a fistfight???
> 
> Everyone, I am so lucky to have had readers such as you come through here. The kind words and the kudos are like a blanket to keep me warm during the winter. Thank you.
> 
> Things are going much better now that my medication's back in full swing and I'm stepped back from some of the @_@ that had been going on in my life. The penned draft is being worked on again and the typing of Sunday's update is already a few pages in.
> 
> iluall and take care, okok?
> 
> \- Kichi @[KichiWhy](https://twitter.com/KichiWhy) (Twitter)


	29. Chapter X: Willowstead - 04: The Sinful Past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dutch van der Linde will not forever be beaten down; the first threads of his return to strength begin to come together.
> 
> There are things about his path that Arthur does not speak often to, but it's the only way to explain to Sadie why it is he does not deserve what she wants.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

The flat sheafs of papers seemed frail and pointless to the uninitiated; bills and coin were the preference of robberies, but slips of paper without bank-promised value were a thing of disdain that his assigned associate, Miss Cartwright, held no love towards. Dutch, however, prided himself in knowing the true value of things that others blithely discarded. Too frequent did a person or a society dismiss the lesser seen elements and too easily could he then step in, taking the proverbial reins to lead the way into the better future and making something of value where all else had deemed it naught.

“You were, I understand, able to recoup some recent losses on the job?” he asked conversationally, the words raised with a soft chuckle. He continued sorting through the small collection of sheets. Each one he would then cross-reference to the master list, a verification that they had obtained each and every last one from the safe thought well-hidden within the building of Rhodes’s good doctor, seconded as lawyer and land title notary for the town. The occupational honours would, no doubt, be withdrawn now, but he worried not about the little that man could earn after his losses were accounted for. Call it dispassion for the rich being robbed of their means to remain rich.

Leaned against a tall cabinet, hidden in its shadow and stood just beyond the swing of the door, Serah Cartwright ignored the flutter of papers, the scratch of notes made, as she loaded six bullets into her revolver. She would then knock them back into her palm, loading the gun anew to lodge the memory of habit into her muscles and to pass time she seemed to consider dull. Disdain radiated from her each time he offered some insight, some invitation to do more than be the gun assigned to see his job secured – and the one to shoot him, no doubt, if he demonstrated the intent to double-cross Samuel Cartwright once the goods were obtained. No fool flourished as Dutch had in the past by blind trust of honest intentions; betrayal, by the trusted few or the newly tested blood, deserved nothing more than the lead pill to put it down. That was why he took care to show loyalty and meet the terms of the job, even fold her into the machinations of it if she but cared to. However, even to this question, her expression soured and a shoulder shrugged up to dismiss him.

“Oh, then. Please _do_ forgive me for this intrusion,” Dutch offered, a mild mockery of her disdain. He lay down the final sheet, each expected piece present, then glanced her way; caught the lift of her lips, the baring of a canine in unspoken, irritated threat.

Silence, otherwise; quite typical of her and she dipped the bullets out into her hand once again, loading smoothly without looking to the action.

“Why is it you bear such reticence towards a proper conversation?” he asked mildly. Dutch had his information and his theories about her, certainly; her likeness had been found on wanted posters before and her position now, second to the Cartwright name, thwarted the law’s interest and intent. More existed, however, and that was why he nudged here and again; applied some pressure to prove a theory over sharing it.

In this, Dutch sought her to make evident her failure of speech, the woman rendered all but mute by past actions. Were she to demonstrate that, he could then better understand how it impacted her. From there, it took only a friendly gesture of small words and slight actions to alleviate her situation in a way that placed favour on him. Indebted her to him? Certainly not. But to have her consider his words with more than base disdain would be the start he needed.

Disrupted in this, however, by the other key piece of the puzzle.

There came a laugh at the door as Samuel Cartwright came in, conducting what Dutch had learned to be his afternoon rounds about the various offices and safehouses scattered about Saint Denis. This one, an office of mid-repute, had been allotted Dutch’s use for as long as he maintained business ties with the Cartwrights and it served its purpose well. The caveat being that Serah Cartwright, his new and ever silent shadow, possessed the key and was, as such, required to be present to oversee him on any endeavour. An inconvenience, but one he knew would be worked to his favour with time. “My sister has never been much for speech, Mr. van der Linde,” he said with a courteous smile.

Serah, in contrast, came off feral with hers; the loaded revolver slid soundlessly into her holster and she crossed her arms.

Dutch could not help but to chuckle at this reaction; siblings, which they proclaimed to be, but two cut from more different cloth would be hard-to-find. One society’s darling with sweet words and the other its dregs with ruthless habits. Blood, he doubted, did truly link them; a connection he would yet discover with a bit of time and faith. “Regardless of her penchant for silence,” he acknowledged, “your sister has been remarkably effective.” This guarded praise he directed subtly towards Samuel, credit given as the one at the helm; the woman stiffened at being measured, but not addressed.

“It can never be said that Serah shirks her duties,” Samuel agreed with that cheerful confidence of his. The man viewed the world as more toys than torments; quite an innocent take for the head of a criminal organization. He walked over and selected the master list, skimming the detailed inventory. “These are the prospecting claims you lauded as lucrative?” he inquired idly.

Dutch plucked the sheet away, laying it atop the stack once more. “Each one issued by the United States government, serialized, and specific to tracts of land in the West Grizzlies. There are recent geological studies in the area that suggest it rife with precious metals, understand.” Some of which had been manufactured by the late Leviticus Cornwall in idle tests before the attention moved to oil extraction and refining. There, by extension, that put him firmly in Dutch’s sights, giving him ammunition with the passion of Eagle Flies and the unlit tinder that had begged for an ember to light it.

Samuel sighed and dusted the sensation of the paper from his hands. “Serial numbers are traceable,” he said, disappointment replacing his idle humours. “That makes them hardly worth the paper they exist upon.” Boredom sullied the man’s demeanour, proving to Dutch that his own lauding claims of shared vision had been a cultivated fancy meant to engender fondness. In truth, Samuel lacked clarity and the true drive of a dreamer, distracted with ease once mild irritations arose.

“Only to the disillusioned mind,” Dutch placated. Calm and confident with each word as he flattened down the sheaf of papers. “There are prospectors that would pay their soul’s weight in gold to own such claims without payment to the government. And the folly of said government is in having the claim title paper,” added with a pat to the stack, “being the final legal authority of ownership.”

“You have a list of these prospective buyers?”

“Far better than any list.” Dutch smiled, wide and confident. “I have a man that could convince the president himself to purchase stolen wares.”

The dismissive wave of his hand ran rough, counter to the carefully crafted collusion that Dutch had worked towards here. Impetuous and yet bland, disinterested; once Samuel decided a tactic not worth his focus, he seemed eager to be free of it. “Very well. Let us see what profit you can make of this,” said with a yawn. “Serah will assist you, of course.”

Dutch leaned back in his chair, drawing a cigar tube from the inner pocket of his vest. “I would not have it any other way,” he said with a smooth smile.

-

“You mean Mary?”

Sadie placed no derision to the words, but the disbelief rose rife in her tone that this could be why he’d ignore what she cast as strengths on the word of a love affair long soured. That she knew of the history stood no surprise; any time a letter come in from Mary’s hand, he’d run to heed the call and no doubt that Abigail, at least, had filled her in to the details. Hell, he never bothered to hide it neither, come back with his tail between his legs after her favour’d been done and his presence relegated back to the foul dirt that scuffed the boot’s heel. And always after being sworn to that his actions were the only thing that could save Mary, that could salvage the ideal of what he had chased after. Conscious or no, she knew how to lift him up and then cast him aside with no regard to his heart.

Arthur laughed, most at himself, with the sound coming out bitter and dry and spiteful. “Mary done herself a favour,” he said. Finally cut him out, she had, and it’d been the only way to resolve the rocky shores that kept him from being able to full sink into the life and love that she led. He couldn’t change to smooth that terrain, couldn’t leave the only life that’d served to raise him up from being the feral creature that Dutch and Hosea had taken in, seeing something in him that Arthur still struggled to see.

It were near the same trouble here, but Sadie thrice as stubborn to see things through, while Mary had spoken proud when her daddy were away, then caved the moment he returned to disdain her choices and cast insult after insult to Arthur’s own face. “Ain’t never cut me down for more than what I done, but I ain’t never done her right.” He frowned, let out a breath and shook his head. “Maybe she never done me right neither.”

“Then tell me what happened, Arthur,” she pushed, unrelenting. “I ain’t going to let up.” The persistence in that promise spoke to how far she’d intent to go, fighting and shouting if that were what it took to sort this out. Doubt weren’t even a consideration in him that it could swing that way again if they both took stubborn on it.

Arthur weren’t keen on talking it, too used to pushing it aside and having folk around him deem it safer to be ignorant over risking his ire. Sure, most of the gang knew hints and shadows of it, with Dutch and Hosea the ones what’d held the wealth of details, but they weren’t like to bring it up. He’d spoke plain of it to Rains Fall when the sickness took him, a way for him to reason out why he never sought redemption and never dared for a life lived better.

Only now he were living a life again, and maybe it weren’t right and wouldn’t last, but shit. What did he have to lose, telling her this after all he knew of what she’d lost? Arthur’d been there from the start of her worst days and now. Maybe it were only right he tried to put it to words, to explain why he couldn’t let himself have worth, when all the cards came down.

“Long time ago, Sadie,” he warned her as tension knotted painful in his neck and shoulders, “I was stupid.” Each word churned out with effort; three in and he near preferred the fighting ignorance over talking to the life he ain’t deserved. “Thought back then that it weren’t what I did to them folk I robbed that’d impact them folk that I cared about what weren’t doing the robbing. Figured I could walk that line, do some things right.” He stretched his neck to the side, felt the pop of vertebrae fighting the hardened grip of his muscles. “Turned out I couldn’t. Then it turned out that I ain’t the one that had to pay the price. Others died, paying for my sins and my goddamn pride in thinking that maybe Arthur Morgan could be outlaw and law-abiding both, dependin’ on the day. Only it don’t work that way and the world took its damn pleasure in teaching me that.”

The pause after his words drew out long. He’d left the details sparse, but her eyes were thoughtful like she had a lead. “This about Eliza?” she asked, turning the name out slow. Damn near struck his chest with the shock of hearing her voice utter that name; hit him sharp and tight enough that his lungs thought they ain’t needed to do more than freeze, that a cough might start up and he fought that down savagely.

Arthur shot her a look, knuckled down on his surprise until it took a wary cant. “Hosea tell you that name?” he hazarded. Hosea’d been the only one with the soft touch of knowing who ought hear about things, who might do better being ignorant to them. Dutch had helped Arthur to scorch the earth that’d been his broken soul, never even needed to swear his silence to know that it’d go to the grave. And John? Hell, Marston hardly knew what the name Eliza meant; all that’d come before he’d been hauled full into the gang, fledgling that they were as a group back then. Fool wouldn’t’ve talked on it though, even if he had; only Hosea had the brains to do it, to discuss in it ways that weren’t like to send Arthur down the darker corners, just along the paths that reminded him of what he done and how he ain’t deserved it.

Sadie gave him a look he couldn’t quite read, brief and sardonic, but knowing in a way he ain’t understood. “When we was in Van Horn,” she said, arm laid on the table and hand spinning the plate slowly in place, “it were one of the name’s you called a bunch. Same as an Isaac?” She leaned back from him, like she sensed he’d a sudden need for space. He did. Arthur could think to them, bring them up on his own, but to hear the names from others still caused a sting, an ache he’d never lose, and that made him cagey. “You were mad with fever, so I never asked about it. Figured you weren’t clear that you’d even said it.”

Arthur thought on shutting it down, moving past it as a feverish fallacy; the out to this conversation baited him and hell if he didn’t want to take it up and be done. Only she knew by his asking, by the way he challenged how she’d learned that name, that it meant something. He pushed his chair back, uncomfortable. Took a long time to get his breathing steady, to stand on the edge and look back into that abyss locked up all them years ago. Easier now than it’d been when the pain were fresh, but still difficult to parse and put to words, but she’d the lead now and weren’t like to let go. Might even worry at it like a damn dog with a bone until he relented, so he just sighed and slumped back in the chair.

“Eliza was pretty young thing, long time back,” he said, quiet; thought of her smiling at his foolish antics, challenging why he kept coming back to eat at that there establishment and never no place else. “Waitress of sorts and me one hell of a patron; ain’t ever gone to other places once I found her.” A self-effacing laugh choked out with his words, shameful at how dumbfounded he’d felt when she agreed to walk out with him some nights. “Must’ve charmed her, stolen some wit off Hosea and tricked her to thinking I had something. We was having fun, now and again. Then it turned too much; she ended up with child and we figured it mine.”

Little boy, he could remember the innocence of his face and the wonder that anything could start out life that perfect. He cleared his throat, kept his eyes on the far wall as he forced out the words. “Living rough weren’t good for her, and weren’t any way for the boy to be raised; gang ain’t had half its strength. Me, Hosea, Dutch; weren’t no place to be safe, ain’t no way to keep family.” He shrugged. “Helped her some when the takes were good, so’s she could stop working the tables. Gave her money to live. Hell, I even went and spent time with them, when we’d no big jobs lined up.” It were harder to recount now, having seen John walk a similar path, having done all he could to make sure it met a different end. “Hosea’d make sure to cut me errands, jobs out their way whenever we was near. Dutch? Well. Hell, that were before Colm killed Annabelle, so he weren’t cold on commitment then.” He let out a breath, pulled off his hat and scratched a hand rough through his hair. “All’d work out, I figured like the damn fool I was.”

Then, the two graves what met him and taught him what the world meant for him to walk away with: Nothing. “Only, my type don’t get no happy endings,” he added, sharper and distant. He felt the cold loss again, shutting him down, taking away that redemption, that idea that he could have more than the devil’s iron grip on his soul. “They was both killed over a ten-dollar theft. The sorts of robbery I done day in and out, only these bastards killed them both. They was dead and buried long before I knew.” He paused, pinched fingers to bridge of his nose. Hard. That pulled his focus to the surface, outside of them shadows and hateful truths; he’d come to terms with it, made his peace, but didn’t mean it didn’t hurt still.

“Point is, they was everything good what I don’t deserve,” he said, voice lower and sticking on the words. “All this hell that’s fallen’s proof of that too. Ain’t nothing good I’ve earned, ain’t no reason to hope for it. Ain’t _right_ to hope for it. Only thing worth anything’s the damned things I done, the lives I’ve taken, the monies I stole.” He scratched at the side of his nose, got a measure of himself again, and looked her way. Red might’ve traced his eyes, but he weren’t shedding no tears. Itched to move, to not see that odd bit of sorrow in her gaze. To get out and do more than talk about things what made his heart and his head hurt.

“After Mary and Eliza, I learned,” he added, finality taking hold of his tone. “Ain’t about intent or capacity. It’s about what you done to deserve it. And it’s the ones I care about that suffer for it when I done and think otherwise. With my history, there ain’t a chance in hell to clear the damn ledger I built up. Hell, I prided myself on it and I ain’t turning my back on that now.”

The break in his words, the longest he’d spoken in a chain and about himself in some time, seemed deafening in its silence until Sadie reached out. She grasped his chin with her fingers, tilting his head back to look at him, the intensity of her gaze difficult to bear. Clear that she were trying to read him and he didn’t shy from the look, met her gaze steady and even for all that it beat at him. “You don’t believe that,” were her assessment after a moment, releasing him. She pushed her chair back and than damn, half-eaten plate went to the wayside again. “You’re a fool, Arthur, but you ain’t that sort of fool.”

Arthur didn’t respond because he wanted to agree. He’d spent the better portions of his morning rubbing salt in the old wounds to convince himself that this weren’t no different. That thinking he could try at being some bit of what drew Sadie to wanting wouldn’t be the damn end of it. He rubbed at his chin, fingers lingered brief where hers had pressed on his skin, and felt the urge for a cigarette come up strong.

“You’ve got to be less afraid of what’ll happen,” she said, standing up. Sadie picked up the plate, half eaten, and headed over to clear the remnants into the fire. The tin plate went into the wash basin to be scrubbed out later. “The ride’s where we live, Arthur,” she said, glancing out the window. There carried a surety in her voice, something she’d earned or wrested from the foul luck of her year, that he weren’t sure he could muster himself. Sadie turned away from the window and leaned up against the basin, crossing her arms and looking at him. “There ain’t sin in wanting a thing,” she added carefully, “and there ain’t mercy in depriving yourself of it.” Weren’t derision in her tone, nor anger nor sadness; the warmth of it, the surety there, struck him hard and made his throat thick.

“I thought you was a degenerate once,” she added, softer that time. “Why’s it you can’t see what I did?” Her voice cracked a moment, the seal lifted from all that anger, real brief before she clamped down on it again. “You’s the only one I trusted,” she said, turning back to the basin and starting to scrub at the plate. “The only one I ever met what made me feel like there were something in my life after Jake.” Her hands stilled and she looked at him, saw something different than her husband no doubt, but there were that hot certainty in her eyes that he’d seen the day before in them seconds before she hit him.

Something in her life after Jake; made him sound like some reason to live and Arthur wanted it to be easy accept that. To assign worth to it and be content. He’d been lost without that sense of purpose, of value, but it sat uneasy on him, like it were a twisting of her husband’s memory. Arthur couldn’t replace that. He’d even less right to try, no matter how he felt on the matter.

The silence that stretched cooled in her eyes, sent the fire to smouldering and coated it with ashen defeat. “You don’t believe it.” Sadie sighed and looked away. “What else do you need to hear, Arthur? You ain’t going to believe it.”

He sat there, stiff. It were his time to speak, they both knew it, but what to say to suit that? He ain’t had it. Arthur drew in a slow breath. “There’re better folk to live for,” he said, hating the words. Sadie were something fierce. Smart. Determined. Crazed, but in a way he understood. But all that didn’t mean he were the right him to want her, to let her want him.

_I want you, Arthur Morgan._

Her words from yesterday echoed in him despite that. There lay the crux of what he couldn’t understand. He could feel still the heat of her breath on his lips, the way it’d pushed his heart to racing alongside his thoughts, stripped him of sense.

“There are better folk in this world,” she agreed, giving him that point. “But it don’t mean that I’d want them.” She crossed her arms, the measure protective as she doled out more words. “I done the better style of living and it ain’t me.” A sad look at that, accompanied by an even slower smile. “I tried hard. I loved my Jake, but he died by being that better sort. So that better living? I don’t want it no more.”

Sadie laughed, shallow, and moved towards the door, stepped wide around him. “Hell. I’m going to check on the horses,” she said over her shoulder, voice trekking hard over pain and the defeat that he’d instilled in there. Abrupt, he hated that he had done that, broken down that resolve to have her step away instead of fighting the way they were too damn adept at doing.


	30. Chapter X: Willowstead - 05: The Merciful Chance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The time's come to make a decision and Arthur ain't great at expressing himself over it. Hey, but at least he doesn't use punches, unlike a certain Sadie Adler.
> 
> Meanwhile, Dutch continues to ply his trade in Saint Denis, calling on an old friend to fence the take from Rhodes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

Arthur let her leave the cabin without struggle, for all that it left him to the poisoning lilt that his mind were too apt to push on things. He shifted from the table, rested his elbows on his knees, let his fingers lock up tight in his hair. “Damn fool,” he told himself. “What are you doing?”

Playing the idiot seemed the safe conclusion. There’d been no one what fought so hard to reach him as she done and all he’d responded with were to push Sadie away. Being sick’d been reason enough to think that those bits of contact, the times he let himself be close to her, were part of the recovery. But on the mend, given her admission, why’d he have to keep struggling against, forcing in that distance?

Hell.

Most of his time since Eliza, since Mary... it’d been about not wanting nothing for himself. Jobs kept him busy and plenty of them went sour, sent them riding and him fighting to salvage what little he let himself have. Safety, security; them were the foundations what came first. He couldn’t risk distraction when all his time and energy were meant to be poured into the false worth what he’d measured himself by. What he still felt he ought measure himself by, and what Sadie didn’t want him to hold to.

Arthur drew out a cigarette and lit it, dragged the smoke in and let the cough it triggered flow for some few minutes. Let it remind him of the sickness and the fever and what’d been there for him through it. What he’d promised her and felt right holding to, the idea that he’d be a real fool to force her to grieve anew after all them scattered and cherished things she’d already lost.

Sadie. There were things he done for her weren’t ever to be done for others. Things he’d felt, like earnest worry, when something happened to her. Things he didn’t full understand in how she stood with him, but all the same, they were things he didn’t full want to let go of. Things he ain’t wanted to do for another in years, by being there as more than some gun to scare off the locals, and shit if she ain’t just opened the door to saying it were the same and he’d tried hard to shove it back shut.

Eliza and Mary, they’d both been their own ladies in their own sorts, but ain’t either of them been a force of nature like Sadie. Ain’t either of them went head-to-head with him, trusted him, and stood _with_ him when it all went to hell the way she had. Sadie walked a path that weren’t so different from his and going back to what she’d known were impossible, same as he couldn’t live the same life he’d been living no more.

_There ain’t sin in wanting a thing and there ain’t mercy in depriving yourself of it._

Them were the words that stuck with him, the resolute statement she’d put forth to challenge how he ain’t let himself have anything, even now that there stood someone that’d like as not shoot Fate for trying to extract payment for his sins from her hide. Goddamn force of nature. Goddamn wildcat. And goddamn, but that decided it more than the arguing, the reasoning. The idea that if they were both already walking the same path, then maybe this weren’t about it being deserved, but about earning it with her along the way.

-

Arthur stepped out from the cabin after his decision come together and withstood the test of time in finishing the cigarette to make sure it weren’t some stupid impulse. He followed the narrow wear of the path to the barn, tried to pull together some sense of words that might convey what he’d realized. What he knew, though, were he had no real skill to talking, but had to sort this out. Had to talk with her, see if she still wanted for something he’d been reluctant to think he had.

Come into the barn slow and quiet, he leaned on the thick planked walls and watched her a spell. The horses had a penchant for Sadie; maybe it were her experience living a rancher or maybe it were the oatcakes she fed them morning, noon, and night. Maybe it were because her rashness had a sweeter touch than his brash side. Arthur’d never had trouble with horses, but she managed their favour equal well, bribery aside, and watching it here in the wake of deciding to try... hell, whatever it was that they could try. Well, made him feel some apprehension, sure, but curiosity too. Hope, almost.

Sadie worked at brushing down Zeus, pushing away her questing nose and admonishing her distractedly that the oatcake would be a reward for good behaviour, not pre-emptive. And it were the kind of soft, near domestic simplicity of a scene that he ain’t seen her in much and he enjoyed it. Honest felt a surge of something good, seeing her doing something other than shouting or shooting; she were natural to both of them things, but deserved more than the hell that come with it.

It were a few minutes before he coughed, swiped at his nose and cleared his throat; she looked his way, but weren’t with surprise to see him there. Wariness, maybe, that he’d come to dispute her again. Tiredness, at fighting the losing battle against a confidence he ain’t even sure still existed in him.

“Those things you said about wanting,” he started, looking to the side. Away from her, giving them both an out in the absence of eye contact. “You ain’t regret saying them?”

Sadie ran the brush down Zeus’s flank, hardly needed the time to think before the nod he caught in his peripheral. “I don’t say a thing unless I mean it,” she reminded him.

All too true, that; part of why he’d the trouble sorting it, knowing the honesty what drove her.

Arthur heaved a breath, pulling the brim of his hat down; braced himself, trying to pull together words that’d do this justice. “You’re one hell of a woman, Sadie Adler,” he said, slow. Careful. Uncertain. “I don’t get quite why you’d want to dally with a fool like me,” he continued before she could refute him. “But, supposing you can accept that I’m a fool sometimes.” He shook his head, felt foolish and the rush of heat that’d be a flush crowding his neck and face. Something like he had around Mary, but less with the fear of not being seen, more with the wonder of why she’d seen him so clear and kept on seeing him. He tried for more of them words, aimed at apologetic tone. “Then. Well. It’d be something of an honour, I suppose.”

Sadie’s shoulders and back lost some of their tension, showing how much the idea of rejection, his hating her intent, had burdened her. She lifted the brush off Zeus’s flank, rested her arm against the mare’s side.

“I ain’t good with talking most times,” he added quick. “Or showing.” A shrug, a sudden thought that he’d burned this bridge and she were just waiting to let him down. “But, you’ve... Hell. You been real important to me a while now, and I ain’t forgetting all you done. Or what’s been done to you.”

Sadie set the brush on the edge of the stall, producing the rewarding oatcake to soothe the insatiable hunger of Zeus as his words died out. Then she looked at him, finally, and nodded. “Alright,” she said softly, but the echo of relief in her tone underscored the warmth.

-

The week and some since their grand reunion had not been the sort he had sought upon his return to the general civility of Saint Denis. Having had indulged in the reward of a safe return home, he found still that being a man of means and family both meant pressing need of income and so he dabbled once again in the twisted affairs of society. Josiah Trelawny used his infinite web of contacts to draw back into that tangled web, mingled his lines with the newly stretched strands of the Cartwrights by giving them advice and leads to embolden them, to endear himself to them. This gave a shroud of security under which he could cast himself out further to establish a return to independence with a multitude of schemes and scams open to him at any given moment.

It turned out to be only a matter of time, in retrospect, that could he operate without encountering one of the more... volatile of his former associates. And so when he was called upon and old favours were reminded to exist, Trelawny did all that he could to connect Dutch van der Linde with Samuel Cartwright. He persuaded and lauded both men in equal measure, the former to ease the prideful sting of _needing_ an investor in his current state and the latter to soothe the wary fears of a man come into power and knowing he held it with a fickle grasp. He raised these illusions in the grand estate and throughout a scattering of the finer establishments that Saint Denis had to offer, coating their meetings with satiny praises and sweet promises.

Much as he would tonight.

Dressed to the nines, Trelawny stood when he spied the first of the ensemble make her arrival for dinner. Serah Cartwright; rumoured to bear no blood claim to the name and said to act as the unsavoury face of the businesses, much as muscle dictated the swing of the arm. He removed his top hat in a fluid motion and bowed low, ever the professional gentleman. When he straightened, it was to see that she met his gaze and nodded. She had a reputation of being a hard rider, meant for the rough work, but her brother had obviously impressed upon her the necessity of relative anonymity this fine evening. Simple in cut but rich in material, her gown blended with the socialites in their midst. Her hair had been braided elegant and skin painted with subtly to hide her scars; in appearance, she did not stand out. She presented quite well as arm candy for the purportedly well-to-do gentleman of their mutual acquaintance – one made through the many efforts he had already vested in him.

“It is _always_ the grandest pleasure to see you again,” Trelawny allowed the words to flow like sweet syrup. He pulled a chair out for the lady, who sat with less flair and charisma than her attire intended to convey. Her partner of the evening relinquished her arm once she was seated, then took his own across the table.

Dutch van der Linde had once been a most difficult man to reach, nigh as inscrutable as Trelawny himself, though his troubled descent of this past year had shed much humanity onto his visage. “Indeed, my friend,” said with the pretense of warmth and absent true empathy. Tonight, he seemed a wane shadow of the man that led the Blackwater job. The dreams and desired did remain, but diluted they were by poor fortune and rough circumstance; a visionary such as Dutch would not have diminished himself as such by design.

“I see that you have made well your acquaintance with Miss Cartwright,” Trelawny commented, waving to the waiter for their finest wine to be poured. “Quite an upstanding family, these Cartwrights. Well established in the humble halls of Saint Denis.” All flourish and facades were his words, even as the lady shot him an irate look, possessing of less than half the social acumen of her brother to know the merit of these gestures.

“Indeed,” Dutch agreed. “I find her a refreshingly silent change from some former associates.” The word chosen with a certain clarity that spoke to how poorly Beaver Hollow must have fared after his own departure.

The wine arrived and, ever adept at playing the role of gentleman, he ensured Serah to be served first. “Never will you find a more impartial speaker,” he agreed with knowing smile.

Serah took her glass and drank it down, clearly of a different mind regarding refreshment and speech. She gestured to Trelawny, looking towards Dutch expectantly.

“I believe she would have us continue with business,” Trelawny remarked with a mild, amused laugh. “You have the documents?”

Dutch reached into his vest pocket – a brand new ensemble, silk-lined and expensive to match the status of his escort – and produced the small stack of papers that he had alluded interest in when first he spoke to him here in Saint Denis.

Trelawny received them, reading the gist of the permits with ease enough. Mining claims, titles, and prospect licenses; each located in the West Grizzlies area, outside the territory currently overrun with the army and within the former territory of Colm O’Driscoll. “Diversifying into mining, my friend?” he teased, brow arched playfully.

Dutch shook his head, ever sly and smooth. “Asset management,” he corrected. “It is my understanding that these claims can only be obtained by such close-minded folk as _bow_ their heads and pay their taxes.” That they followed the law lay the unspoken implication. “Folk of a freer mindset – the true dreamers – are not granted the favour of accessing these opportunities and that puts them at a disadvantage. I would correct that.”

“You always were a voice for the every man,” came his jovial commendation, fallacy aside. Trelawny knew men like Dutch van der Linde well. Profit, personal, would ever be the motivation at the end of each road, but some masked it under grandeurs of bettering the world around them. He did not judge, being a master illusionist and apt to spin yarns that would make himself a saint amidst the sinners if it but served a purpose.

“Indeed,” Dutch agreed, mild. “However, it became clear to me that perhaps you, my _friend_ -” Emphasis on this term. Loyalty had ever been the foremost requirement Dutch put forward, though Trelawny had enjoyed freedoms from that expectation by the monumentally different approach he applied to the work. Finesse and contacts required mobility and style that the more unlawful sorts did not possess. He did hope, momentarily, that no sour repercussions lingered from his rather inelegant departure from the gang. It had been under Arthur’s own blessing, but towards the end of his days there, that no longer afforded the sort of protections that it had once, his loyalty seen as waned ever more. “-that you might best know who would be interested in such dreams.”

That struck the theme, the reason to this re-acquaintance. After the unfortunate business in Saint Denis, the resultant loss of Hosea, Dutch was in need of an elegant fence to handle the more delicate, high-end wares he acquired. One well-versed in how to dispense of, and profit from, assets obtained on the wrong side of the government’s laws. “There are many a dreamer in this world, but,” Trelawney said, paused but a moment to add the honest shade of doubt: “What price they will pay to achieve their dreams is the question.”

“Oh, I am certain you could entice them to make significant investments,” Dutch goaded, leaning towards Serah with a grin. “Mr. Trelawny is quite skilled at selling yesterday’s wash water as today’s finest perfumes,” he confided to her with a chuckle. A challenge lay in his dark eyes, one that spoke to the fire and fury of the Dutch van der Linde that the law had so desperately sought to stop.

“I will avail myself of the usual commission,” Trelawny noted, inclining his head to accept the task. Already he could think to a collection of folk with sufficient ambition and capital that had blacklisted by officials for unsavory history. They would pay fine funds for patently legal ownership of a claim, no matter the questionable means to obtain it.

“You wound me,” Dutch claimed, hand to his heart. “That I would deny you the compensation to which you are due.”

“Perish the thought!” Trelawny called out, pleasant and joking.

That served to conclude their business; they retired to the wine and food under the tolerable facades of friends, presenting no suspicious trends nor making an early end to the evening that might otherwise suggest this had been, indeed, a matter of simple business. They strayed to the inane of topics for the most part, but there remained questions unasked that he did decide to risk towards the very end, after hours spent without mention or reference.

“What news of your family?” Newspapers had spun tales of unlawful bastards and the rush of Pinkertons that did save Roanoke Ridge from its own disrepute, but absent had been the details of those outlaws that comprised the gang. The lack of these details had gnawed at him, reasoned out it worth the risk of ire to learn more. Still,Trelawny did not present names with the query; Dutch would know well what he asked after and, in truth he did by the sudden cold steel to his gaze.

“Oh, you know how boys are as they grow up,” Dutch replied, drawing deep the smoke from his cigar. Serah watched the exchanged with a disinterested expression, not privy to the dangerous nuances that lay within. “John ran away from home and Arthur...” He paused, a hardness come over him in place of the fond light he once had sported about his first son. “It’s best we not speak of him at all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lovelies! We are back on track!
> 
> _“There ain’t sin in wanting a thing,” she added carefully, “and there ain’t mercy in depriving yourself of it.”_
> 
> Manic hamster cackling. We have reached the line that this story was named for. <3
> 
> These scenes were a pain to sort out; apparently I started them about four times and rewrote them later in the notebook and I'd think I was done one, then would find this BETTER way of writing it in further notes and then would start anew. Think of playing 52-card pick-up and that's basically been the last four chapters in a nutshell, LOL.
> 
> Next week might be the first kiss? Finally? It's in the notebook!
> 
> \- Kichi @[KichiWhy](https://twitter.com/KichiWhy) (Twitter)


	31. Chapter X: Willowstead - 06: Rested Reflections

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Declarations of attraction are well and good, but the world goes on and Sadie needs to figure on the safest way to get the supplies back in case Pearson turns out a sour note. There'll be times to talk on it more, as Arthur then proves later that same day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

The boil had been lanced, and with it, the poison built up from days of denial drained from it. All them words and admissions served to bleed the tension out with it, but the surface of the water between them felt as unbroken and unchanged as it had been before the stones of truth both skipped across and sunk into the depths. They didn’t talk much the rest of that day beyond what came needed, didn’t find the gumption to act on the admissions of attraction newly established. Too delicate, it all seemed, to risk it; too new to the idea that the shouting about it had come to a head and they _could_ act on whatever form they might let it take.

Key part being that they _could_ act on it, but they did not; yet still it felt lighter to have it aired and known, to not have that shadow of want come up in the words between them to complicate matters further than their dual tempers managed when the sparks took.

The next morning dawned warm, the late fall sun shedding heat down over Lemoyne in a humid coating that offset the few frost-touched nights of before. The chores Sadie worked on around the stead went smooth and simple. The odd sensation of normalcy it wrought on her thoughts came off strange as the day stretched into the afternoon, hailing with it memories of her domestic life of before. The daily tasks of her ranch had an echoed presence here, a routine to them that she fell back into with an ease she ain’t expected. And Arthur, well, he ain’t shirked no duty neither for all she watched him sharp for signs of his limit breached. Irony in that she trusted him to know her attraction, but not to work himself back into sickness; ever ready to push hard against his stubborn will, test her mettle time and again against his need to do _more_.

Morning chores done, she’d given Zeus and Eceni full run of the corral and watched as they grazed their way through the sweet, long grasses and late fall blossoms that lingered this far south. Sadie crossed her arms loose over the top railing of the fence, leaned up there as she watched the mares. “How’s your chest?” she asked idly, glanced his way.

Arthur sat on the ground a few posts down, leaned back against the fence with his hat drawn low; the position one of rest that she’d near challenged him to take after his splitting wood earlier in the morning ended with his breath wheezing loud enough to be heard across the clearing. He grunted and pressed a hand to his chest, like it were some way to assess the full feel of it. “Same ache,” he reported, the tired old statement worn thin, but honest. “Ain’t worse than last night,” came as hardly the improvement to ease her concerns. He’d coughed a good portion of the night, dry over the mucus-filled ones what wracked him early on in Valentine; still, it kept him awake late and stalled her own rest, with Sadie laying on her bedroll up in the loft and counting each cough, measuring it for the trace hints of trouble. Brought out that whispered paranoia over them both, that he ain’t so clear of the ill as they both wanted him to be.

Sadie nodded to his words and kept her eyes on the horses, thinking to what she’d said about that difference between the ability to and the stupidity of riding out when things needed doing and he were still recovering. What she’d seen in Rhodes had her treading closer to careful than she liked, and who she’d talked to there drew her to that borderline of cautious. Distance and time between the conversation with Pearson and the now ain’t served to placate it neither. It robbed her of the brash conviction to drive forward with all due haste, and instead called for her to try some plan other than ones what ended in guns blazing. It weren’t a good feeling to take on, this hesitancy, and she wanted it shed however best she could shed it. “Think you’d be good to ride out with me to Clemens Point?” she asked, kept casual and noncommittal in the words. “Supplies ought be there tomorrow; got them bringing the wagon there so’s I can bring it back here to unload and ain’t no one need know where we’re at.”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll be fine,” he said even before she’d finished. Arthur like as not had to be chomping at the bit to get out, after damn near five days holed up at Willowstead and scarcely more than the riding needed to get them down from Valentine before that. “You expecting trouble?”

Sadie thought on that a bit, scratching idle at her arm. “Maybe,” she admitted, the word reluctant to slip out. Fair to tell him, sure, but after the reaction to Strauss on the road, she weren’t certain it the best thing. “We got an old friend of sorts down in Rhodes and I ain’t meaning that discouraged buddy of yours.”

Arthur pushed the rim of his hat up, wary and questioning folded into the way he looked at her.

“Pearson,” she said, simple and flat to keep the issue seeming small, hardly a concern. Tried to play off her doubts on it, to be proven that it weren’t worth the worry. “Works down at the general store, or so’s he told me.” She let out a short huff of air, disbelief traced through it. “I been thinking on that and I ain’t sure it feels right.”

“Strauss first, now Pearson?” A gruff laugh rife with that same disbelief; seemed Arthur’s two cents landed somewhere near her own. “That’s no coincidence I’d trust.” His tone came concerned and tense, trying to make a measure of the odds and the risks. “You see anyone else?”

Sadie’d not delivered the full telling of her excursion, what with the fighting and the sorting out that they’d been occupied with. Damn, but bringing up Rhodes at all had threatened to turn him sour at the recollection of being stranded by her hand. They’d settled the trouble there, but the sting of it ain’t full faded and left her plenty incentive to allow them details to slip her mind. Weren’t something to continue leaving silent, now that she’d raised the profile of the old camp cook; they’d started talking and it were best to finish it.

“McIntosh,” she added, recalling the flash of panic he’d shown her in passing. Sadie stretched her neck to the side and turned around to rest her back against the fence, elbows hooked back over the railing. “There were some dead folk in town,” she explained. “Strung up where the whole damn population’d see them. I figured it meant someone trying to pull a smoke-and-mirrors trick so’s they could rob something.” She shrugged up her shoulder; ain’t needing to talk about the names painted out, the threats inherent in the scene, the extra complications what had no current tie to them. “And hell if I was going to stick around to see what was up. Turned out McIntosh’d been riding into Rhodes as I rode out. He kept quiet when he saw me, but seemed real clandestine, his being there ‘round the same time as them corpses.”

“I don’t like it,” Arthur muttered. “That’s too many damn coincidences and questions what don’t got an answer.”

“Why’d you think I went with Clemens Point for the drop?” Sadie asked, sharp in contesting his doubt, making sure it weren’t over her choices. “It’s out of Rhodes a way and we know the area. I figure if you hold back, watch for trouble, then we can get the supplies out even if Pearson brings trouble.”

All them words did nothing to sway him, leaving the idea a foul taste in his mouth by the heavy silence what followed her words.

“We need the goods, Arthur,” she pushed. “We got no time to be selective on where it comes from.”

The truth of it penetrated the wariness and he scowled, the point gone to her favour. “Don’t make it feel right,” he grumped as he stood, stretched out his back and shoulders slow. “Gonna need your carbine,” he added. “Still ain’t replaced mine.”

Close as she needed to hear to know he’d be riding out with her and keeping an eye out for trouble; comforting, both to know it were _Arthur_ that’d be there and to know it were the kind of thing he knew damn well how to handle. A contrary throwback to his statements about the life he knew being dead, but the skills he had from it kept serving them both. Seamus with the stagecoach, Alden with the keys to Willowstead; them small skills and contacts he had what turned critical when they were running to ground, ducking low and needing some place to hide

“Cleaned and oiled it night before last,” she said with a nod back to the cabin. “Been keeping it by the door.”

“Good.” He headed towards the cabin, to retrieve the gun no doubt; he’d need to test the sights, the kick of it on the chance, small or large, that their lives’d rely on it.

“There’s a warren up north of here,” she called after him, putting a lighter turn to her words. “Rabbit’s a better taste in stew than salted beef.”

He laughed, an honest show of amusement at her blatant hint that he go hunt something over simple target practice. Arthur paused, glanced back her way and gave her one of them first glimpses of that knowing smile she’d seen oft enough in first learning who he was, borderline cocky in the arrogance of it. “If Pearson’s behind that food you bought, we’ll be needing the whole damn warren to be adding any flavour to what we eat.”

-

Turned out them sights were sound on the repeater, much as he’d expected of it. Hellfire like Sadie’d never survive with poor gunmanship or kit and the carbine showed care to the maintaining of it, well-oiled and clean. Iron sights at thirty feet and Arthur managed two rabbits; one to roast up fresh, one to slowly melt its fat and flavour into a stew what’d serve them a couple days. Arthur thought to also go for one of the hefty turkeys that ran wild in the area, an old habit from hunting for nigh on twenty mouths needing feeding, but kept off the idea. Numbered at two for company, they’d make nearer a week’s worth of meat out of the rabbits and weren’t no point to being greedy. Winter down in Lemoyne weren’t like to have much in the way of snow and one of them’d be able to hunt something fresh every few days if they kept smart about it.

“Nice rifle,” he remarked, raising it in a half-salute as he stepped inside the cabin, both carcasses hefted over his shoulder.

Sadie stood over in the small corner of a kitchen, cutting down potatoes for what’d like as not be stew; never even looked up at him before her retort came out. “I know,” she replied, her words smug. “And it’s mine, Morgan.” The possessiveness of the words made him chuckle, hold to the feeling that they were doing better now. Things felt real formal still, stilted with some expectation, awkward, that they ought have been something closer for all they done and said, but unfamiliar felt the admissions and neither of them wanted to spoil this new, heady state between them.

Arthur propped the repeater next to the door, same as she’d had it before, then made it clear he relinquished any fool claim by stepping back, hands clear of it. He missed his guns, most of them lost with his horse, his kit; he’d need to make careful tripes to Rhodes, replenish them one by one without raising too many eyebrows. Felt like he were missing some part of himself with them gone, and intent to rectify that rode fair high in his thoughts. He’d enough from the recompense to cover off a Springfield, but’d need funds for more than that, once they figured a way to make bank without robbing the damn bank.

“Now, this ain’t saying you’ve got to be the domestic one,” he said, light and teasing, as he dropped the rabbits expectantly on the flat, rough-filed wooden counter. Arthur grinned at her, backed away with his hands raised like he had with the rifle, relinquishing claim of the work left to finish the butchering and prep the meat.

Sadie shot him a guarded look at this echo of what fair’n’equitable debate’d first saw them ride out of Clemens Point over her gutting Pearson and being done with it. She flipped the knife in her hand so the blade lay flat between her fingers, held the handle out to him. “Prove it,” she challenged, alluding right back to how she and her husband’d done shared the work equal.

“Oh, but I don’t mean to take your work neither,” he countered with a crooked smile.

“This or muck out the stalls, Mr. Morgan,” she said archly.

“Well, when you wrap it up all sweet like that...” Arthur took the knife and stepped aside to let her pass, grinning brief and mischievous. “How’s it them societal folk say it? Ladies first.”

Sadie shot him a smug look as she moved past and headed out the door to mind the barn and the horses. Comfortable to them both to have that humour, no doubt, and she’d be pleased that he’d relinquished the more physical task to her. Mind, he recalled too much about her vehemence when he tried otherwise, then the exhaustion it brought about when he kept them tasks under his purview.

Left to his devices, Arthur finished the field clean of the carcasses and cut one up to be stewed overnight with most of the potatoes, a can of kidney beans, and half a bucket of drinking water to keep it moist. The other he quartered and set in an iron pot, tucked in against the coals of the fire with a few potatoes added in with the meat. Weren’t fancy, the meals he made; camp cooking was what he knew, and even that tended towards spearing a piece of meat on his knife and roasting it over the fire. Sometimes, when he’d time and a grill set up, he’d cook it with some thyme or something, but his tastes weren’t the expensive sort. Today, ain’t no fresh sage or nothing he’d seen to forage, but maybe on the ride out tomorrow he’d spy something what’d make later meals take on flavours.

Turned back from the fire, he pushed down that irritating shade of a cough what chased him, the unsteady surge it brought about when his body started thinking it should rest while his mind kept intending to go strong. One of them signs of his limit being reached and he muttered a curse, leaned his hands on the uneven counter; Arthur hung his head a few minutes to keep the world from spinning, annoyed by the damn sobering reminder that he weren’t recovered yet.

Once it passed, he grabbed himself a bottle of gin from one of the crates on the floor. “Damn,” he muttered, moving nearer the fireplace and dropping into one of the chairs set there for lounging, piled thick with comfortable furs. The ache pulsed through his lungs, same as ever, and he pushed it away irately. With a bit of effort he pried open the bottle, his best means to soothe the pain short of tonics or laudanum. The alcohol settled hot down his throat, a better vice what wouldn’t crowd his head with cottony lethargy.

Arthur leaned forward in the chair, elbows on his knees, and made himself rest the way he’d promised Sadie he would. His head dropped to rest chin to his chest and he drew a deep breath. Didn’t like showing these moments to her for all the ruckus they caused, the frustrated worry they triggered in her. Didn’t like having them, it damn hard to push back on that ingrained instinct to ignore it. To get things _done_ but he had damn well promised her he’d try to do better by it and goddamn, but he would.

Hours passed like that, the gin dwindling to nothing in the bottle as he dipped in and out of a light doze. Arthur shifted at some point to lean back in the chair, hat pulled over his eyes as legs stretched out, hands folded over his stomach with the bottle held between them. That let him sleep a measure deeper than the dozing, though the coughing kept scratching at his chest and throat. The gin did its numbing work, in time, to make it subside. All that let him slip further from awake, deeper towards sleep, and he decided it ain’t worth fighting it.

-

Sadie lingered outside the cabin long after the stalls were cleaned, horses watered, and about all them tasks she could figure to do were done. They’d be gone a good chunk of the day tomorrow and she’d see them ahead on chores, less to rush on in the dark after all were done. The hours and riding’d be long and hard enough on Arthur without the spectre of work left to be done; all the more reason what justified her through each task of the afternoon.

Eventually, though, it were the smell of roasted rabbit that drew her back to the cabin just as the sun shifted towards its evening hues, sliding down towards the line of the horizon to give eventual sway to the moon. They’d been living on boiled grains and thick stews made with whatever supplies that came to hand; easy, low maintenance, and most could be hold warm near the fire to serve as multiple meals, which served them both equal well. Pearson’d had them trained well enough to tolerate the same meal for days running, but they both tried for more than the sharp rum flavouring when it was their turn at the helm. The idea of roasted meat, fresh and rich with flavourful fats, came to be downright tantalizing.

The sight of Arthur asleep met her inside the cabin and it came unexpected, but reassuring, after their days and weeks of tension, of arguing over his doing anything but resting. Almost felt like they’d finally found some shared and stable ground.

He’d sprawled in one of the chairs near the fire, empty bottle slowly slipping from the lax grip of his hands. Faint, even breathing moved through his chest, the rising and falling pattern of it steady. No snoring this time, but also no wet whistling of air through constricted passages. Almost sounded like breathing without the effort that hounded him day and night; but, measure of the gin that weren’t left in the bottle, she figured the ache of it weren’t quite past him, needed the blunting of alcohol to tamp it down.

Sadie shut the door, firm and quiet-like, behind her, then took off her hat. She left it on the table nearest the door and walked over to the bucket of water they kept near the hearth; it leeched heat from the fireplace, made the act of washing up her hands and arms less a cold turn this late in the day. The morning, with water drawn straight out of the well, it were a damn curse and blessing both in waking her up and freezing her fingers in the same action of cleaning.

Crouched there, she spied the cast iron pot nudged near the coals, figured that to be the source of the aroma, and then the stew pot hooked in place and slowly simmering at the edge of the flames. Damn but they both smelled a hell of a sight better than Pearson’s cooking.

Arthur continued his inelegant nap and she let him, drawing her knife instead. She knelt by the fire and used the sharp tip to test a few cuts of the roasted meat and potatoes; not much blood welled out of the former and the starch’s resistance was lesser in the latter. Close to ready, she figured as she wiped her knife clean on her trousers and sheathed it, then settled back on her heels. A glance to him, not more than an arm’s length away, and the debate internal cropped up on whether she should wake him for food. Doctor said he needed to eat plenty to have any hope of catching back up on the weight taken from him. She’d seen evidence of that in Van Horn, the sharpness of his ribs easily felt under the red woolen layers of his union suit, seen it in the way the fabric stretched over them and dipped between each ridge in following the curve of his skin.

Doctor’s favour won over her own mind to let him sleep, though she reasoned it more because he’d like as not have a knot in his spine from the bent backwards angle the chair loaned him. The longer he half lay like that, the worse it’d get and she figured it better to save him from the ache. Sadie straightened and walked over, reached first for the empty bottle to set it aside; leaned forward to grab it, she didn’t see his head shift, nor the blue eyes what glanced up at her from under the shadowed rim of his hat. She stayed focused on the gin bottle, grabbing at it and expecting an easy lift of it. When his grip went suddenly tight on it, her counterbalance faltered and it were easier to crouch down again, trying a firmer pull on the bottle with a frown.

There came a huff of amusement and he released his hold, letting her win the bottle; his fingers brushed alongside her hand as he did, lingering on her wrist. She shot him an indignant look for the trick, but bit back the sharp retort that rose quick to her tongue. Maybe it were the way he looked at her, with a sleepy, half-cocked smile, was what silenced her; gave him the peace to straighten up in the chair, lean himself forward and rest his arms on his knees, releasing her wrist with a chuckle. “Gotcha,” he murmured, amused at his antic.

Sadie, freed of that ghosted tingling from where he touched her, rolled her eyes and set the bottle down near the fireplace’s end, looking back at him. “You best be feeling better, Mr. Morgan,” she said, rested back on her heels again, “if you’re up to no good trickery.”

“That was plenty good trickery,” he countered, a hand rubbing some of the sleep from his eyes. The waft of gin carried on his breath suggested he’d had nearer the full bottle, but his eyes were clear and motions sharp enough that he ain’t seemed drunk. He resettled his hat straight, then looked at her with a thoughtful sort of expression.

“What?” archly asked, Sadie trying to dig into that brain of his. She had a real time of understanding how he ain’t held himself to being much, couldn’t wrap her own thoughts around it, and that’d stymied their talks plenty. Confidence came second nature to her, moreso since she’d gotten back on her feet after Jake’s death, but it protected her too. Seemed Arthur hardly needed protection from most anything, big and ready to fight in his healthier times, but how he ain’t ever equated that confidence in his lethality to actual strength and worth still gave her head a hurting to consider.

“I been ruminating some,” he said, reaching for her hand proper that time, no tricks of the bottle folded into it. The grasp on her wrist came gentle and warm, bringing back that odd little tingling like her senses were sharper where his skin touched hers. Familiar to how she’d felt, long enough ago, when she’d been courted and doing her own courting of Jake, but different. This time came with an air of challenge, of risk to it, like she weren’t certain she could keep him the way she’d known her husband’d be hers.

His guard was down, inverse to the amount of gin he’d had, she guessed. Sadie’d been arguing with a sober and sick Arthur for what felt like months now and she weren’t too averse to this more amenable, mildly inebriated moment. The calm at the heart of the storm, maybe. She’d heard he was different drunk, heard about his night with Lenny in Valentine. Seen him drink a fair few times to know he still had most of his sense after the first bottle he drank, and know he carried less of his dangerous rage the more he had after that.

Arthur heaved a breath, brushing his thumb over the back of her hand. “Why’s it you-“ paused a minute with at awkward clearing of his throat, a bit of red flush creeping up his neck- “fancy a washed up outlaw when you’d make any fine man plenty happy?”

That cinched the idea that he’d had the full bottle, guard lower than she’d seen to be asking that; they’d shouted it out, but before it’d been his words that carried the venom with them, dangerous and refuting every point. This came off softer, like he were trying hard to put together the equation and only needed a few more hints, but she knew also he’d heard her say her reasons before and she ain’t never been fond of repeating herself.

“You know why,” she shot back. “This ain’t about making some other fool happy anyhow. It’s about what I want.”

“I know why you claim it,” he said with a shake of his head. Took another breath and pushed past the ache of it, swallowing down a cough in the effort. “What I ain’t got is why you never run off with one of the others.” His free hand raised in a rough gesture out the way that Clemens Point stood, couple hours ride south and east. “That fool Kieran I get, sure; damn boy started out the wrong foot being an O’Driscoll tool and ain’t never had the balls to do nothing much for it. Micah, hell... Foul jackass and I’m real sorry you ain’t killed him that night at your ranch.” He hesitated here, searched her face for some answer what’d satisfy that need in him to understand what drew her back to him each time she tried to push away her attraction. “But there were good folk,” he added. “Charles? Damn fine man, that one. Sean... well, hell. He’s dead and was an annoying loudmouth, but he’d’ve done right by you.”

Sadie frowned, briefly frustrated that the fight would take on a different form then, comparing the options lined up like she’d been some sort of society belle paraded on season. Everything Arthur did denigrated himself, like he expected to be the final option after a long list of others, and she kept having to find ways to prove him wrong. “None of them gave me pause,” she said simply, keeping it without fuss. “I weren’t looking to fancy anyone anyway, and all them others... Mostly avoided me, like I were a glass run with fractures and ready to break. You never did; I challenged you and you challenged right back. Near to as fair a treatment, Arthur, that anyone gave me. Made me look at things different.”

Arthur listened, nodded; kept quiet as he brushed his thumb along the back of her hand, distracted in his thoughts. “I don’t feel like I’m full right to be okay with this,” he said. Didn’t look straight at her as the words come out, like he thought she might shoot them down even after her shouting her need for him the way she’d done. “You lost your husband and all you had,” he continued, gruff with himself in that moment. “Feels some like it’d be taking advantage.”

Sadie turned her hand over in his grip, her fingers too easily twined with his. “You call yourself bad,” she said with a sharp laugh, “then you say it ain’t right to let a woman fancy you.” The words came out more sad and bitter than she’d intended; she shifted her track on it, thought maybe explaining it some might help, since his head wanted to be real thick about what he meant, and _could_ mean, to her. She heaved in a breath, let it out quick, and barrelled ahead before she could think it quite through.


	32. Chapter X: Willowstead - 07: Actions Over Words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Talking's well and good, but there are times when actions speak louder than words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

“While you was busy dying, I thought all that through,” Sadie told him, steady as she could manage for all her heartbeat were running staccato on thinking it, on the distracting feel of her hand in his. She swallowed, quick, and shook her head. “Arthur, it don’t change a thing. I lost my husband, but not my life. It’s not that I don’t think Jake’d want me to be alone.” A shrug rippled over her shoulders; her Jake’d want her to do what’d be best for her and, sure, maybe this weren’t the smartest thing she could be doing, but it damn well counted as the best in her mind. “And don’t go thinking you went and preyed on nothing. Like I said, I’d no desire to want a man again, but I can’t reconcile that with you.”

Arthur kept quiet, kept his blue eyes cast towards the fireplace, unease spread through his expression.

“You done so much for me, and with me; and you damn well respected me through it,” she continued firmly. “So, turns out I weren’t able to push the idea of you away. Losing you, though... Hell, the idea of it near killed me. When I realized how quick I’d’ve traded my soul on this earth for yours to be saved up there on that mountain? That’s when it started making sense to me and that took time to figure on, and you damn well had to be... _you_ all them times at Emerald Ranch and in Valentine, half dead and still stood with me, you damn fool, and it ain’t made it any easier to ignore, so I’m done trying.”

Sadie stopped and freed her hand reluctantly from his so she could reach up for his chin, rough as it were with stubble from a few days’ growth and the uneven shave of his hunting knife. “But, this ain’t just about me and what I want, Arthur,” she continued, tilting his head to make him look her way, so he could see in her eyes the bits what she couldn’t put to words. “I don’t aim to take advantage of you, same as you don’t with me.”

Clouded conflict, self-effacing to the idea that what he was and what he wanted mattered, passed over his expression, heavy with that constant uncertainty what chased Arthur, the quiet voice only he heard that questioned and doubted every bit of thing he could’ve done right or wrong. That same one what said every bit of worth he might feel weren’t real, nor true, and that made his expression harden. He lifted his head back, away from her grasp, looked to the floor to keep from her gaze; his mouth drew down to a thin line and she could see the effort of a swallow, a cough that tried to sneak past it.

“You feel otherwise, you say so,” she added, firm and meaning it. She let her elbows rest on her thighs, stayed crouched there a moment to keep from breaking the moment with movement. Took up a breath and pushed out the parts she didn’t want to say, but needed to lay out so he full understood that this weren’t a one-way route he’d been locked into. That he could still reject her wanting him and she’d let him, if that’s what he needed, no matter what it’d hurt in her to lose that chance. “I ain’t taking what ain’t freely given. You want Mary, memories, or what have you? You want those and I’ll step off. Let you have that. Don’t mean I’ll leave you alone, just that I won’t go for wanting. You hear me?”

“I hear you,” he said, almost irate. “Christ, Sadie, you-“ He hesitated before he looked at her, reached for her hand again and she let him. Arthur took a deep breath as he pressed his fingertips into her palm, a steady pressure what’d like as not give him clear tell of how her pulse were running faster. “I figured myself dead,” he said, that calm resignation what never faded over what’d been his death loomed over him. “Weren’t expecting to crawl down out of the Hollow alive. And...” His free hand moved, rubbed across his jaw and he struggled with what came next. “It was you that rode up there and beat back the devil himself...” He trailed off and braced himself, pushing past the same boundaries she’d knocked down in explaining her want of him. “I always known you was strong, surviving them bastard O’Driscolls. You near as could killed Micah that first night. Kept alive amidst a pack of the same sorts of outlaws what ruined your life. I full on admired you, but weren’t right in the head or the heart to do more than that.” He shook his head, a self-effacing, pained look. “But, Mary ain’t no part of what I want no more, memories or nothing, ‘cause I can’t change the way she wanted.”

“I’ve no mind to make you live right by me,” Sadie interjected, not letting him take that path again; not letting him subject himself to that flail he beat his back with time over and anew and she’d tear it from his hands one of these damn days. “Life ain’t long enough to worry on redemption,” she added, the statement a truth she’d come to know all too well.

Arthur ain’t let up his grip on her hand, gentle though it were, and he squeezed it, stared at it. “Thing is,” he said, moving on, like he were looking for some way out. All she needed, if he wanted out that bad, were him to damn well say it and Sadie’d no want for it, but she’d respect it if he did, goddamnit. “Dutch was the only one I’d’ve expected to come for me, and we was family. When it was you? I ain’t ever thought that possible.” His thumb was rough, calloused, as it moved up her hand, drifted over her wrist with an idle circle rubbed there, right over her pulse. “It were a shock. Damn, still is. But... it don’t mean I ain’t...” He faltered, awkward. “I don’t mean to be aloof,” he said, finally. “It don’t mean I want nothing.” Arthur let out a heavy breath, cursing and shaking his head. “Only means I ain’t good with words and expressing them right.”

Sadie had the idea then. A way to move him past these words that confounded them both, that they both struggled with, and it were a way without the underhanded shift to it she’d done that first time she near kissed him, then half killed him with her fists instead. She twisted her arm, grasping his wrist with her fingers. Her other hand reached out, grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled him forward. Then it took only a bit of stretching from her crouch to set her lips on his, fingers tight in her holding of him to prove this moment true and happening. She closed her eyes, not ready to witness his reaction, not ready to risk that second-guessing what might crop up. All her focus went into the kiss and everything hung suspended in that moment, a tipping point.

When he didn’t pull back, she moved forward; aggressive by nature, she parted her lips, tongue surging forward to swipe the taste of gin off his mouth. That seemed the encouragement he needed to respond in kind, to put his tongue into play. Pushing against hers, maneuvering; his head shifted, tilted an angle to better allow him to draw back, bite her lower lip briefly before moving again, covering her mouth with his to share the hunger she felt, sharp and sudden.

An insistence she’d not felt in months surged within her, pushing her to stand and lean forward. Sadie released her hands to grip the chair arms as she leaned over him, pushing him back into the chair, tongue sliding against his. A break for one single breath, tracing it on his lips, before she were pushing back in with a soft murmur from her throat. A sound of need she’d been denying herself, a sensation of it to match.

Arthur responded to that with haste, a hand raised to the side of her face in a gentle caress, fingers shifted down to curl around the side of her neck and hold her where he could keep kissing her, brushing barely against the strands of hair loosened by work from her braid. His other rested first on her side, then moved to follow the line of her hip. He hitched his thumb into her beltloop and pulled her forward by it, forward onto him until her knees rested on the outside of his thighs and she could feel his breath hitch, a rumbling low in his throat. A groan at the contact, physical, and she could near feel his want for more of it.

Sadie moved her hands from the chair, travelling them up his arms with feather-light touches, until she could dig her fingers into his shoulders. She shifted her weight on him, rocking back only to lean forward, firm, as she lingered on the hints of cigarettes and gin that she drew from his kiss. His hand on the side of her neck made her flush, burning hot, and she drew off the kissing with reluctance. Breathing harder than would be strictly proper, all the while licking her lips like the cat what got the cream, she looked at him, near even in height when sat on his lap, and saw them similar signs of passion, unfamiliar but not unwanted, in the flush of his skin, the heaving breathing in his chest, the cloudy want in his eyes.

“That expresses it fine, Mr. Morgan,” she said after her breath caught, smiling with understanding that, yes. This was something they both wanted, for all they’d stumbled in the saying of it. Should have just kissed him before heading out to Rhodes, could’ve made it easier, but it were done and here they were. His hand on her waist shifted, slow and firm to her side, where his thumb brushed against her shirt, as though through it he could feel the rough healed stretch of her scar. Sudden and entirely too explicably, she were taken by the desire to remove clothing from the equation, to have him know the feel of the scar, the rest of her, and to know the feel of his calloused fingers as he learned her. His grip on her side tightened, his of a similar mind, and he started pulling up and tugging at her vest and shirt. His eyes had a growing fire to them, a heady sort of confidence that now he’d relented, he’d see it through and thorough.

“Better at actions,” he agreed, other hand trailing down over her shoulder and lifted off for only a moment as he moved it down her chest, hesitated only a brief second before pressing his palm against her stomach, stoking the heat there, working towards the buttons of her vest. The reticence of his doubts drained away, pure expression of desire its antithesis. “I’-“ He stopped, breath hitched as his fingers snagged on a button, and he leaned back in the chair to glare down at them. “How the hell’s this work?” A familiar tone of complaint coursed through his words and it made her laugh.

“Trouble?”

“Goddamn corsets are easier to figure out,” Arthur muttered, managing the first few buttons now that his focus had shifted to the task.

Sadie raised up her hands, thumbs learning the contours of his neck, the mark of his Adam’s apple, as keen distraction from it all the same. “You’d better figure it out,” she warned him, silencing any retort with another kiss. She pulled at his shirt collar, snapping a button off in her own haste, and pushed it back, breaking from his lips to move her way down the side of his neck, biting now and again to earn a guttural groan, half a curse, or a mutter of her name as he finished with her vest and tugged it off of her, then started on the tighter buttons that closed up her shirt.

They continued on for a time she lost measure to, save for how far he got (half the buttons of her shirt undone) versus her own progress (unbuttoned each of his layers down the length of his chest, hands exploring old scars and rough patches of hair). Both were ready to continue it to whatever conclusion sated them each, but for a sudden, sharp smell cutting through the musk between them. Sadie raised her head, sniffing at the air, just as he managed to get one hand beneath her shirt, a burning distraction in the touch of his palm on the scar that ran along her side. “What’s that smell?” she asked, wanting to full ignore it and get back to winning the race against buttons and skin.

Arthur seemed all to ready to dismiss it, much as she wanted to, but the charring note caught in his nose. “Aw, hell,” he started, shifting uncomfortably. He tried to push her up off of him, a sudden and unwelcome haste fuelling it. “The rabbit!”

Sadie stumbled to her feet and some steps backwards, and caught the telling notes of the charred smell, the smoke come from the pot nestled near the coals. She cursed and ran to it, kicking it back from the heat of the flames as he struggled up and stumbled over to check on what had been planned to be their dinner. Inside the pot, blackened meat and potatoes rested, a dry tribute to what could have been. He reached in, cursing the heat, and pulled at a piece of the rabbit, only to have part of it crumble apart. Some stayed meat, sure, but it’d be dry, tough. He sat back on his heels, turning the chunk over in his hands and looked over at her with his breathing heavy, skin flushed, and the both of them left in partial undress.

The ridiculousness of the situation struck them at the same time, a cue that started them both laughing at the sudden twist of events. The ruined dinner served to ruin mood; they’d made progress, flushed and mussed, and now it was food of all things that stalled them from taking things further.

“Wrapped up in it like some fool kids on their first time!” Arthur wheezed through his laughter, first time in recent memory that it had been humour to deprive him of air, rather than illness. “The hell is wrong with us?”

Sadie straightened, settling her shirt back down and straightening her suspenders, making a semblance of propriety. “There ain’t nothing wrong with me. _You_ was the one that pulled _me_ down,” she retorted, picking up her vest from where he had discarded it. She coughed and pulled it on, but left the damnable buttons undone as she reached out, offered him a hand up that he actually took with a chuckle and a grunted thanks.

“Sure,” he said, slow, dragging out the phonetics of it. He gestured down his front, mostly bare from her dedicated excavation of buttons and fabrics both, and then lower on, where there was something of a protrusion tenting out his trousers, proving how invested he’d become in her actions. “It were all me.”

“Precisely,” she said, clearing her throat, buttoning up her shirt and vest. She knew herself to be right red in the face, broke out of the moment’s passion to reality, but he suffered a similar state. She’d intended a kiss - something to reassure him, but damn how quick that it she wanted and took for more. And now their dinner had been sacrificed on a carnal altar that they’d not even _finished_ on. She sighed and pushed the pot with her boot. “Damnit,” she muttered, the hunger of her stomach fighting that of her desire enough to distract her. “I’ll see what the hell we can salvage for eating.”

“Sure.” Arthur nodded; seemed disappointed, a bit, to see his hard work at undoing the buttons of her vest and shirt, in turn, undone with such ease, but of the same mind that maybe the moment weren’t quite right no more. “Well. If you will excuse me,” he said, starting at his own rows of buttons, less the one she’d torn free. “There’s something to attend to.” When he had some semblance of his attire in order, he walked stiffly to the door and adjusted himself in his trousers when his back was turned from her before he stepped out. 

Sadie occupied herself with the salvaging of dinner, after taking a moment to douse her face with lukewarm water from the bucket and call him a cheater for being able to ‘attend’ to things when they’d gotten nowhere good. Some part of her squirmed, complained, and then demanded she follow him outside and finish the job, but she pushed that down. It were time to eat – overdue – and her, ah. Hell. The pleasure bit’d have to wait. It’d hold. She remembered them damn doctor’s orders about feeding him more than anything else and so that’d be the end of it, she told her distracted, desire-ridden body.

When Arthur returned, his own desire-filled distraction taken in hand to finish it, he’d settled the rest of his clothing and splashed water on his face fresh from the well. The stiffness of his gait were gone, what with his self-satisfied in a sense, and that let him focus on proper things, like cleaning up before he came in and then helping her make sense of the charred remains.

Between them, they managed to make a meal of the charcoal contents, tearing out meat and scraps of potatoes onto two plates they set down on the table. She claimed the seat nearer the wall, trying to keep her head held straight and steady, as he took the chair with its back to the door.

“I ain’t changed of mind, Sadie,” he said, taking a moment first to clear the air some. “But sure do _not_ want to hear the story of that retold around the fire.”

Feisty, fiery Sadie Adler shot him a look half-consumed by embarrassment and brandished the dull fork by her plate at him. “That goes to both our graves,” she warned him.

Arthur held up his hands, no intent to argue that. “I’ve no clue what you referring to,” he returned, chortling. He seemed lighter now, like he understood better where he stood. Or because thinking up top always worked better after the below head were quieted. “You and I were obviously out on a ride, took too long to get back, dinner burned and there ain’t nothing untowards about that.”

The arch of her brow challenged that. “You are an impossible man,” she muttered, leaving the debate at that.

Heated as they had become, nothing more happened after they picked their way through the dry, burned bits of rabbit. Hard tack though it were, Arthur dug out a second plate without her urging it and between the heavy food and the private release, he looked ready to retire. Ain’t even fought it when she suggested it and instead sat on the edge of the bed, pulling off his boots. Arthur stopped a second, looked her way for a fumbling moment, unsure with what his thoughts were toying with. “You might well sleep down here,” he suggested. Unspoken was the ‘with him’ and the ‘in the bed’ that went with it. After being quite so personal, felt maybe not so wrong to share the mattress. Hell, they’d near shared a chair in all too many ways what mattered.

Sadie thought on it and, hating herself for it, shook her head. “Sleep,” she said, headed for the ladder up to the loft. “Ain’t enough known about tomorrow to be needing distracting tonight. And you are _damn_ distracting.”

Rueful ran his expression, but Arthur had an unapologetic cant to it. “Okay,” he said, laying back on the bed with his arms crossed behind his head, acting like some right cocky bastard. “Don’t go sayin’ I never offered.”

All his teasing and inviting, but Arthur still fell asleep not long after she scaled the ladder, still flush from the day’s exertions. Sadie stripped down to her shirt, taking a moment to trace the still red scar of her side, recalling how his fingers had felt on it. On her. And how it’d been all too brief of an encounter.

Weeks and more of wanting him, finally given the chance, and where’d she end up but tucking into her own bedroll, the floor above him. Alone and a fool, putting the need to have him rested over her need to have full explored him. She groaned, cursed herself, wanted for the distraction for all she’d declined it, and burrowed into her bedroll.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy holidays!
> 
> My gift to y'all: The first kiss.
> 
> They only took over 140k words to get there.
> 
> The romance had not been part of my initial planning for A Sinful Mercy, but it developed on its own during the writing and I came to appreciate the nuances of these two characters and how they play off one another. With the ice broken, Sadie can bring out some of that humour that Arthur's lost since he fell ill. In turn, Arthur gives Sadie the freedom to explore herself beyond that fierce need to (1) survive and (2) kill O'Driscolls.
> 
> ...and now she can explore him.
> 
> Let's keep score, y'all. Arthur managed, what, maybe ten buttons? Between his shirt and union suit, Sadie managed double that. _Someone_ has nimble fingers.
> 
> Anyway! Take care and stay safe, whether your holidays have recently closed, are upcoming, or are not a part of this month. See y'all on the far side of Christmas with the next update. I'll be off work from the end of day on the 23rd through the new year, so hoping to get some other writings done and posted in the off time. Also, to break my heart and play RDR1 again. And finish RDR2. Again.
> 
> \- Kichi @[KichiWhy](https://twitter.com/KichiWhy) (Twitter)
> 
> P.S. The updates keep being late by a few hours, sorry! I accidentally maybe needed to put a hole in drywall to make sure no wiring had been exposed and ready to burn down my house. And then I had to patch said hole in the drywall. Look, long and short of it is that life with me is an adventure!


	33. Chapter X: Willowstead - 08: Clandestine Destinies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are certain indignities a man of vision must endure to attain his goal and Dutch van der Linde bears his with grace. Meanwhile, Sadie does not bear with grace the fact that she did not pursue further indiscretions with Arthur the night prior.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

Clandestine was the design of the meeting, presented as the reunification of two lovebirds long parted and intended for quite a different purpose. An elaborate cover, to be certain, but not so grand as to the extent of other illicit masquerades. These Cartwrights were said to have run goods, monies in hidden compartments of stages with unknowing passengers and _that_ had the hallmarks of grandiose mysteries and illusions. Brilliant cover, a stagecoach business, but too predictable in the long run. Too exploitative of innocent folk could well be the other argument, but one less pressing than it had been years ago, when his gang had been established by the fledgling few on the brick-and-mortar foundation of reassigning wealth in defiance of one’s station.

Idealistic goals, he recognized now, and bordering on an unfalteringly innocent vision that had served him better once it aged with wisdom and refined itself with experience. The scope of it narrowed to the attainable: Theft of the wealth from those undeserved of it. Dutch had ceased enriching the vulnerable strangers living on the fringes of society when it became clear that they could not sustain themselves. He, however, could sustain those that followed him, that stood by him and eased the burden of each robbery with their strength and their devotion. Their loyalty enriched him, or _had_ done so; his treasury in that regard now stood bereft of its spoils.

And so he worked again to fleece wealth from the rich and trust from the Cartwrights until he could amass enough of each to make his move.

Today, the move made involved known players, each aware of their roles in the immediate scene, each ignorant of the place in the grand scheme through which Dutch moved. Trelawny, arriving in Rhodes from the north, was meant to play the Saint Denis businessman returning from weeks of meetings with investors in Boston. Dutch took on the mantle of patient uncle waiting with his young niece, Serah, for her beau’s long overdue return – enter Trelawny, stage right, as that connection.

Elaborate means to transfer the wealth attained by Trelawny’s sale of the claim permits to interested buyers - ones that only he could summon up with his magician’s touch - but Samuel had insisted on the secrecy. The funds due to the Cartwrights were to be invested in their legitimate enterprises this turn around and, as such, had to appear of innocent origin.

The Count shifted beneath him, ears flicked back, as they rode into the dusty town that remained too entrenched in its own vile history. Disgusting place, on the whole, and hardly improved after his own orchestrated removal, by plan and coincidence both, of the Gray and Braithwaite families from power. Too many folk still longed for their putrid ‘good old days’ and it seemed, some days, that the only way to be free of the filth that persisted past the war would be to burn the whole of the state.

Folly, Serah’s mare, picked up to a canter and passed him, earning another flick of Count’s ears with his white stallion clear about his disdain for her. The Count had not shown any fondness for the chestnut Arabian from first meeting. Fine horse though she was, and costly too, but there were precious few that passed his steed’s muster; Count favoured none but his rider and tolerated next to none beyond that. Dutch stood in contrast, able to admire the expense or herculean theft involved to attain such a mare.

“Fine horse you have there, dear niece,” he commented, maintaining the slower pace. Under duress did the lady slow her mare again, at risk of outpacing him. He sat relaxed in his saddle, this ride no more than a pleasant lark to the eyes of others. “A gift from this suitor of yours?” came asked with a sly smile, delivered as teasing.

Serah shook her head, the motion as vehement as though she had sneezed or shouted, though neither of which she had done. There lingered the question of whether she could make such noises, for he had yet to hear more than an irritated huff of air slip from her lips. Truly did she adhere to the idea that a lady of means is better seen than heard in the public’s eye, though little else of her reflected such sophistication. The dress she wore at her brother’s insistence and tucked away in the skirts were deep pockets, ideal to conceal her revolver and carry their payload both. Offered the comforts of a wagon befitting her apparent station, she had instead mounted Folly defiantly; to ride side-saddle acted as her deference to the propriety she was expected to display.

Why Samuel insisted on her oversight neither perplexed nor troubled him. He’d run a careful, loyal crew to the very end, where keeping tabs on new leads and influences served as part of that. It dealt some insult to be the new one, the one whose loyalty was not yet known and so required constant escort. Given the unfortunate setbacks of late, it was a sobering reality Dutch managed with poise, singularly confident that the concessions paid now would reap him the requisite benefits later.

That, however, did not mean he remained without sufficient influence to correct the petulant failure Serah had been demonstrating throughout the ride, discarding her expected role to ride with slumped shoulders, scratching idly at tobacco lodged between her teeth some hours before. “You vex me, my dear,” he said. The words were levelled in jest, but he allowed the burn of ire to chase them, to make it clear his standards here were not being met. “A shining example of how actions can speak louder than words, yet... so much of what you have done has said nothing of you.”

Serah gave her head an irritated shake and nudged her mare back into the lead, intent on being done this errand sooner over later.

Dutch chuckled at how easily his words worked under her skin and urged Count to match her pace, drawn up alongside her at the hitching post. The train had arrived, passengers starting to mill about and depart as their belongings were readied; Dutch dismounted first, hand pressed to Count’s flank to shift him closer to Folly, such that the woman could not dismount. He moved, calm and assured, to hitch his steed and then pulled the reins from Serah’s hands, tying the hitch tight before he stepped between the horses, back pressed quick to Count in an easy command to move away. That allowed Dutch to lend his hands to the lady, easing her down with a gentle grip at her waist; the style of assistance that any lady ought expect and appreciate according to the rules of society. Serah, of course, instead looked venomously at him for the action and, in retaliation, he kept his hands on her waist a moment longer, a warning squeezed between them.

“Did not your brother ask you behave?” he reminded her coolly. Samuel had spoken long with her before they departed, imparted the importance of her role to minimize suspicion, and yet so little of it had taken.

Her eyes narrowed at him and she made deliberate, careful effort to bat at his shoulder as though in a playful mood. The force to the blow demonstrated her anger at being held to task, his warning served as salt in the wound of her pride.

Care tended to not react to this disrespectful showing, Dutch offered her his elbow with the confident, inviting smile of one with the upper hand. She took it with reluctance, following as he led her up the stairs and engaged her in the meaningless drivel expected between an uncle and his niece.

“My darling Clara!”

On cue came Trelawny through the station doors, gesturing with arms held wide to his beloved as he strode towards them. Serah tensed on his arm, then released and stepped forward on light feet, throwing herself into the false embrace. He held her tightly, a simple sleight of hand placing an envelope in the folded pocket of her dress before holding her at the socially appropriate arm’s length. “Never does time move with such lethargy as when I am away from you,” he enthused with great passion, his showmanship unparalleled.

Serah smiled, tense and with effort; she took his arm and pulled him towards the stairs, gesturing to her patient ‘uncle’ waiting at the base of the steps. All as though she were pleased to introduce them, mind that her conviction lacked the necessary empathy to be believed.

“Ah! This is your devoted uncle that I have heard so much about?” Trelawny asked, congenial and feigning ignorance as he led her down the stairs, ever the gentlemen in role and, quite truly, life. His words and gestures were larger, offsetting the attention from her poor showing to his own masterful performance.

“Indeed, I am,” Dutch confirmed, jovial and pleased to leave the weight of their illusion of Trelawny’s experienced shoulders. His falsehoods were better focused to the true goals at hand: The Cartwright fortune and the long route it would take to get there. “My niece has spoken well of you,” he added, failing to resist the irony inherent when Serah had yet to utter a single word in his presence.

“And she of you, good sir!”

Pleasantly hearty greetings and grand introductions allowed them to mount up, Serah riding behind Trelawny on her own horse, without an eyebrow raised by those about them. All very mundane and acceptable, accorded such by the plan.

Dutch allowed Count the lead of a few paces as they turned southeast, the inane pleasantries flowing easily between himself and Trelawny. All too simple, the game of smoke of mirrors, and its familiarity gave him focus to spare in looking upon the remains of Rhodes. That granted him a moment of pause, eyes fallen to the general store where a wagon stood with a pair harnessed, supplies loaded. He watched the portly, half-bald man step out of the store, adding a sack of grains before he paused to wipe the sweat from his brow.

Simon Pearson, in the flesh, and looking remarkably refreshed for one bearing the burden of abandoning his ideals.

That drew his eyebrows upwards, defying the contented solace of an uncle, and Dutch took note, schooled his expression back to patient platitudes as they continued the ride through the outskirts of Rhodes. There, once voices could not carry back to alert him, he looked to his companions. “Tell me, Trelawny,” he commented. “How familiar was that fellow loading up the wagon by the general store?”

“Quite familiar, my friend. Quite!” Trelawney was rather unphased by it, not knowing perhaps the full extent of why the sight of Pearson would come off as notable to Dutch. “You’ve placed him there to fleece leads, I assumed.”

“No.” Dutch did not let his voice waver, his conviction firm. “His appearance is a new development. Do promise me that you _will_ advise me, friend, if you happen upon other acquaintances of our mutual knowledge?” That counted on Josiah’s loyalty as bound in their re-acquaintance in the employ of the Cartwrights; no longer so able to disappear as he had at Beaver Hollow, the man would be wise to be reliable once more.

Trelawny paused, cautious at this turn in the conversation. He had been absent those final days and few survived or spoke of it. Dutch was not one to elaborate on it either. A dark day in memory recent, a dull scratch on an otherwise smooth gramophone recording. “You know that I would never willingly mislead you, friend,” he promised, an assurance of uncertain sorts.

An abrupt smack on his arm and the faint crinkle of bills, neatly stacked, drew Dutch from that. Serah held out a portion of the money from Trelawny, no doubt his cut of the job. He accepted the money with a nod, leaving off the issue of Pearson where her ears could take too much note of it.

“Now, I recall you promising me the tale behind the lady’s silence,” Dutch said, turning to a lighter and far more intriguing mystery. The money tucked into his vest and the situation with Pearson he could check into later. Those few loyal remnants, Bill and Javier, could investigate once he had reunited with them, in due time.

“It would give me pleasure, Dutch,” Trelawny claimed, “but for the lady having set her sights upon my silence regarding hers.” A lamentable tone, tinged with amusement, that had him glance over. Serah had drawn her revolver and tapped her ‘fair suitor’ with it in a warning fashion that silence would be, for the first time in his illustrious life, his best virtue. “I believe she wishes you to remain ignorant for the time being.”

“The lady does enjoy her notoriety,” he reflected with a chuckle, “but always reticent about others knowing more than her efficiency.”

-

Heat and humidity crowded into the air, bucking the late fall trend of cooler mornings; it followed them from Willowstead that morning, stifling and oppressive. Sadie, having spent a restless night being distracted from her lack of indiscretion, enjoyed nothing of the heaviness to the air, its stillness drawn down as a weighted blanket over the countryside. Came off like something were building up, like some storm lurked on the horizon, and she’d no taste for it.

Paced side-by-side, she and Arthur rode out in relative civility, pointedly not discussing the sacrifice of dinner to the charcoaled altar due to their unplanned intimacy, nor about the intimacy itself. That served to further distract her, the unsaid words leading them both further from the path what might’ve continued the indiscretions towards _mutual_ satisfaction. Damnit.

“Feels like a damn anvil on my chest,” Arthur commented after a brief fit of coughing, words catching thick in his throat. Signal that it were not her mind alone that sensed the air as oppressive, but an actual showing of the weather. Arthur’d a habit of complaining about ideas and others aplenty, but not so about himself and even less about his health – especially when it’d come down to just two of them, lest such words start her after him. “Don’t,” he added, a warning, “say I ought head back. I rode worse than this before, it ain’t going to kill me.”

Sadie felt outright predictable, having to shove that very statement down and the grumbled protest that rose in its wake. That’s what they were become? Tired repetitions of the same promise? No. They had certainly entered a new state of being, flush and fevered of a different sort, and the way her thoughts kept going back to it made her regret not taking on the proffered _distraction_ the night prior to avoid how it kept damn well distracting her today.

“All what matters is you don’t alert Pearson,” she said, reins loose in her hands. Zeus had no real temper or energy of her namesake, content to follow the road and pace Eceni, oblivious to the sexual tension wound tight in her rider.

“I ain’t come for Pearson,” Arthur replied, a meaningful look cast to her direction. “Him here and us run into Strauss? Could be others and we don’t need that damn mess. You don’t need to be sorting that out alone.” The words implied that he’d be watching her back and minding outside threats as much as the known risk and that suited her. “Pearson acts up, I’ll leave him to you. Hell, seems it’d be poetic justice of a sort.” There was a rumble underlying his words, lungs bothering him fierce in the thick air, but Sadie forced herself to remember that he’d the cough long before it near killed him. Like as not, that irritation to his chest could and would be something what haunted him even as his health come back.

“I wish he would,” she muttered, little love lost between her and the cook. Too many sour arguments and rum-soaked comments had crowded the air between them when they’d been on good (enough) terms; she’d be first to lay him flat if the old fool gave her reason to.

“He ever do more than bitch at you ‘bout things?” Arthur sat casual in his saddle, habit had him shift with each step of his mare, though his words were of a sharper, probing sort. Seemed he sought to make sure there weren’t more than irritation underlying her constant laments of the man.

Sadie snorted, the shake of her head quick and vehement. The very idea that the half-bald fool’d have had the courage to do more than run his mouth outright amused her. “No,” she confirmed, chuckling. “Pearson’d had a sharp bark, but his bite weren’t nothing.” She shifted, stretched her shoulders back, trying to push off the heavy air and her fatigue in the motion. “Had more trouble with that lowlife Micah than ever did Pearson. Just can’t stand a man what only knows complaints.”

Arthur tensed at the other name, lip curling at the mention of the rat bastard what sold them all out. “What’d that son of a bitch try?” he asked. Growled it out like he hungered for any more affronts he could add to Micah’s tally of sins and take out of his hide some day coming.

“No more than he did to the rest of us,” she figured. “Slimy sort, and rotten to the goddamn core. He liked to ply the girls and offer them a _real_ man.” This with a contemptful snort, the recollection clear of how poorly that’d served Bell time and again. “Those tactics are what work when you pay for a woman’s attention and none of them ever wanted his money.”

“Any times he tried that with you?” There come a dangerous undertone there, like he’d pay special attention to make sure anything what wronged her were wronged right back; protective, of a sort, and it triggered a bit of irritation that she could’ve dealt with things herself and, banked back in the coals, a bit of warmth to hear him keeping her interests close.

Sadie put both reactions aside and shook her head. “Abigail chased him off when he tried, back at the start,” she admitted. She’d needed the protection then, when she were lost in the act of picking up the pieces of her soul after it’d been shattered. “I chased him off myself after a time.”

Arthur nodded, the faint smile he bore content and relieved in equal measure. “Abigail’s a good woman like that,” he remarked. “I saw that she’d done and took you on at the Overlook, heard some of them talks you two had back when things were real dark.”

“Abigail’s one of them few things what gave me reason to get back on my feet.” Sadie didn’t mind saying it, not when the credit was due, nor did she mind what she added: “Kind of how you, and John, helped me move forward again.” Each of them helping to lay the foundation for her vengeance, in no small form, but also in giving her connections to the living. Helped her to feel like there were folk what were worth living for after Jake’d been taken from her. It’d been why she pushed hard to get John out of Sisika, why she’d let Arthur send her with Abigail at the end, determined to get her safe. Hell, why she’d ridden up after Arthur to see him off the mountain and alive, no matter if it took her soul to do it.

“That all feels like it were damn long time ago now,” Arthur said, scratching at his chin with a resigned sigh. “Goddamn hard to track it. All that stuff at the end, ain’t always clear in the recollecting.”

“Then don’t track it no more,” Sadie said, a decision she’d come to when waiting, near as she came to praying, to see if Arthur’d pull out of the fever and make more than a few days alive. “What happened up at the Hollow put an end to all that mess,” she continued, adamant. “Those of us what got out, we don’t need to hold to what was. We got out, Arthur, and we still got enough problems without dragging all that behind us.”

“You know, you got a real habit of oversimplifying things,” Arthur muttered as he shook his head, the wry undertones of his statement telling that he weren’t real mad over it. “I ever tell you that?”

“Plenty,” she scoffed, played it off as jest. “Just ‘cause I look to the result first don’t mean I’m wrong neither.”

“No, but it _means_ ,” stated with a break towards serious, his tone adding real strong emphasis there, “that you forget the part where there’s a road we got to follow there to make it through alive. Ain’t good to just crash through the brush blindly.”

Sadie laughed again, shot him a taunting look. “Roads ain’t the only ways of moving forward, Arthur,” she reminded him.

Arthur frowned, returned her look with a roll of his eyes “Seems I recall you shoving me in a basket with nothing but hot air to make it float,” he said, proving her point. Figured he’d kept _that_ recollection with real clarity amidst his admission of missing out details towards the end. “Ain’t no road up in the skies.”

“It _worked_.”

That’s how she looked at things, that’s how it mattered. “That’s the point, Arthur. We do what _works_ , not what don’t.” Sadie ran the risk of prideful on this, sure, but she’d too much loss, too much hurt in the past to carry it forward. She’d take some things on her shoulders, like her vow to chase down Micah Bell and kill him painful slow, but it were only them things she could rightly finish, not be drowned by.

“Over. Simplifying.” Arthur reiterated, a tired and exaggerated sigh.

“You tell me when you got a better way and we’ll try it then,” she tossed him that bone, about the only form of compromise Sadie Adler had to her.

Arthur shook his head. “You’re damn impossible,” he muttered. “Why’d we get on this talk anyways?” The words asked like he’d lost track of it in his annoyance.

“Beats me,” she said, letting it go. “Now, hush up. We’re getting close to the Point.”


	34. Chapter X: Willowstead - 09: Coincidences or Conspiracies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The list of folk they'd left behind, only to find again in or near Rhodes, continues to grow as Sadie retrieves the supplies from Pearson and Arthur provides cover in the event of things turning foul. Troubling more than that is when Sadie doesn't come clean on exactly who now has been seen in the area.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

Eerie familiarity haunted them as they rode towards their old camp, Sadie following the trail in; there’d been plenty of grasses and weeds growing over the path, but she could pick out the wagon tracks where the greenery’d been worn down by repeated travel. Arthur peeled off into the woods to hitch Eceni out of sight, said that he’d take up position on one of the rising ridges what offered the area some of that defensible privacy what’d made it appealing to the gang. She, in turn, rode on ahead, waving off a fly in annoyance. The humidity clung to everything much more heavily this close to the lake, denying her the hope she’d had that it’d be cool enough to satisfy the heat.

All through the clearing, she could see shadows of where they’d pitched tents and numerous scorched patches from the fires what’d been scattered around. Weren’t much to close her eyes and see all the tents, the gear where it’d all lain like it were a painted picture. Some warped style of home, short-lived, and Sadie opened her eyes again, saw the scattered stone remains of the cooking fire. Recalled threatening more than once to roast Pearson on it. Them trampled down sections of grass around what’d been roughly assembled tables, the wheel ruts where the wagons had been parked for months before the sanctity of camp’d been violated.

Last thing she noticed were the spot where Arthur’s tent’d been pitched outside Dutch’s, acting as the first line of defense by the stockpiles of ammunition stored there, safe and away from both open flames and opened whiskey bottles.

Struck her sudden, the recollection of that day Arthur’d rode in, half-dead from Colm’s machinations, fevered from infection and determined to say that it’d been a trap, all along, but he ain’t been broken by them. He ain’t given them up. How he’d protested care until he passed out, barely sated by reassurances that he were okay, that none of them thought he’d sold them out.

That first week’d been rife with uncertainty to whether he’d survive what’d been done to him; Grimshaw had the women of camp, even roped Sadie into it, put to a watch on his bedside, mindful guardians traded out every few hours to make sure Arthur never expired, never woke alone.

Back then, she’d thought to tell him that Colm were a fool with a fool’s plan; that he ain’t needed to worry about being broken, about the trap, because weren’t no one dispatched to find him. Arthur gone missing and Dutch never raised the full alarm. Never fell for it. Placated them that asked about it, made it clear and just shy of an outright order that no one was to ‘hassle’ Arthur by trying to track him down when his boy was obviously just out hunting, Pearson having said sometime or another that their stores were low.

She saw now that it were Micah, too, what’d been treacherously spitting out soothing words, assertions that Arthur got out fine, would return once he’d bagged a few rabbits or a buck. How it might take time because he’d lie low after the parlay’d turned rough and fruitless. Part of her figured that Micah, lying snake, must’ve set the whole damn thing up to be rid of Arthur, to get himself Dutch’s full ear without the distraction of the most loyal hound, the one ready to bay the alarm whenever he pushed too far.

Her lip curled, disdain staining her memories; snake were too good, too kind a word for Bell’s sort of rot, and damn injurious to serpentkind to be associated with him.

Quick as it surfaced, she dismissed the recollection, banished the shades of the past what hung in the air to history, where it belonged. Clearer of mind from that, Sadie could see Pearson, stood by a loaded wagon with an open rum bottle in hand.

“Glad you could join me, Mrs. Adler,” he said, voice rife with sarcasm; the words came blunted and blurred under the unsteady embrace of alcohol. Pearson made a show of checking his pocket watch, holding it to his ear until he could hear the ticking of it. “Late?”

“Quiet, you old mutton,” she shot at him, it all too quick and simple to fall back on zeal of their mutual dislike. “I got my reasons, same as you better for being full marinated.” She wrinkled her nose, reined in Zeus to a stop. “I can smell the damn rum from here.”

Pearson’s ruddy complexion reddened further; he swallowed, then managed to look affronted. His feet followed an unsteady path as he come over to meet her. “Some of us have commitments,” he said, the words ignoring her accusation of his being drunk.

Sadie dismounted with a disdainful laugh. “The only thing you’re committed to is that bottle,” she snapped, leading Zeus to hitch at the big tree that’d served as centrepiece of their encampment. Uncle’d spent many long days sat up against it, even more apt than Pearson to have a bottle in hand and sobriety a distant dream.

He reached out, striking fast to grab her arm; he ignored her abrupt shout of surprise, instead leaned in like there were others what might overhear him. “It’s the only good thing that’s come to me today, Mrs. Adler,” he slurred, breath thick with rum. “Didn’t figure you...” He trailed off, stumbled back with his hand up when he saw she’d reached for her gun. Weren’t his first bottle drank that day, it looked by the stagger to his stop, but least the fool knew danger when it reared up. “I never liked your disrespecting nature,” he spat out. “But a rat? That I didn’t figure you for,” came with a sour laugh, the words striking her with more force than a slap would’ve.

Anger came over her at the accusation, sudden and cold; her fingers itched to draw her revolver and settle this affront that stood—no, leaned and swayed before her. “You saying _I’m_ the one what talked?” she challenged, hand resting on her gun with her head held high, eyes narrowed. He’d fled Beaver Hollow before it were known Micah was it, same as most of them had, but being accused of that sick duplicity in his ignorance? Unforgivable.

Pearson shook his flabby jowls to the negative. “No,” muttered with a wave of his hand, vague, towards Rhodes. “You... You brought _Dutch_ here,” he hissed, angry as his focus found its point amidst the sea of inebriation. “I _saw_ him. In Rhodes.” He swallowed, thick, and she could see the panic rooted in his gaze. “You know what he does to turncoats? To good folk that cut from the gang?”

That name damn near stopped her heart right in her chest; Sadie recovered when it staggered up into a pitched pace, the sense of her world and the security she’d found with Arthur and the stead dropped away. Mouth dry, she left off her gun and instead clutched the low-hanging branch next to Zeus’s hitched reins. “You saw Dutch?” she pressed, needed to know she’d heard that right.

Pearson sneered. “Don’t play foolish,” he jabbed a finger at her. “Saw him and his horse. I’d know The Count anywhere; no one could ever ride him but Dutch. Even Arthur got bucked off him. No. It was Dutch, I’d stake my honour on it.” Whatever little of it he had left.

“Where’s it you saw him in Rhodes?” Sadie felt suddenly alert, her tired distractions lost in the whirlwind of thoughts; she felt near exposed by this information, salved only by knowing Arthur were in the trees, watching her back if shit went south.

Shit.

Arthur.

Did he know? Did he need to?

“You tell me,” Pearson challenged, stuck on this idea that she’d something to do with it.

Sadie glared him down, forced her hand off the branch; her defensive layer of anger came up solid about her. “I ain’t ridden with Dutch for a month and more,” she hissed, pushing him back with her hand, chasing him with each step. “Everything went to hell up there at the Hollow and ain’t no one left _to_ ride with him.”

Struggling with shock, fear, or outright drunkenness, Pearson stared at her like some gap-mouthed fish, face reddening as he scrambled for response. “You- He- What-“ All manner of stammering as he fought to process it.

Served her fine, Sadie driven to catch the rapid thoughts what said she needed some sort of plan to get out of here. Now. “Micah was the goddamned rat,” she growled. “The fucker sold us out to that Pinkerton bastard to save his own skin. So, don’t you go calling me a rat, Pearson! I were there until Dutch turned his back on Abigail. I stayed longer than _you_ ,” she spat at him, letting her disdain show clear.

Shameful indignation that it triggered, but there were shock in the way he stepped back, stared at her with wide eyes. “You’re saying Dutch being there’s got nothing on with you?” he asked, like a damn snail in the way his thoughts weren’t speeding about.

“No, it don’t,” flatly said. Sadie were trying to figure out how then Dutch could be in Rhodes. _Why_ he’d be in Rhodes of all places. They ain’t made marks, ain’t raised hell; seemed impossible that he could’ve found or followed them there, but why else?

Pearson frowned, wiped his bulbous red nose on his sleeve. “Then-“ Trailed off to think, slow and ponderous; she had no patience for that molasses-slowed trek.

“What all did you see?” she pressed. Sadie needed to figure out what the hell was going on, why the hell she now had to add Dutch to the list of too-close-for-coincidence folk she’d seen or heard of since they left Valentine.

“Dutch riding with Trelawny,” he admitted. “They had some woman with them I never saw him with before. They were headed southeast; I’d wager towards Saint Denis.” Now that Dutch’s presence’d been established an anomaly, Pearson seemed willing to talk. Fool also turned out willing to stumble and fall onto his rear, back pressed to the tree. He took a long swill from the bottle.

“They talk to you?” Sadie stepped back from the tree and the mess of a man, kicking at his booted feet with her toe.

Pearson shook his head. “Don’t think they saw me,” he muttered, that tinge of panic still haunting him. “No, couldn’t’ve. Th-They’d’ve stopped. Dutch would’ve stopped.” Spoken like one who’d bought into what Dutch claimed to represent, that pure ideal of wealth being for their taking, of worth being for his benefit, of a salvation handed out solely by the goodness of Dutch van der Linde.

All of it fucking hogshit.

“When was this?” she kept the pressure up. There’d be trouble, if it happened too recent, and she’d enough trouble suddenly in trying to figure out where the risk were, what to do now.

“This morning.” Pearson made a hazy gesture to the wagon. “While loading up the wagon, saw them talking at the train station before they headed out.”

“They see you leave?”

“I kept – I keep a low profile, Mrs. Adler,” he protested with a vehement shake of his head. Indignation had penetrated his drunken stupor to raise that protest. “I waited until their dust was long settled before coming out. You may think me a fool, but I am a survivor first.”

Sadie looked at the wagon, then the sky for some measure of idea, some route to take. “I heard plenty of your stories, and you was always something, that’s for sure,” she muttered, distractedly wiping her hand on the seat of her trousers. The heat and humidity were still heavy, but weren’t the only thing causing her sweat no more. Damnit. “Southeast, they was headed?”

Pearson nodded.

The idea of taking the wagon north alone weren’t too good now, but no way’d she let Pearson ride with her; that’d tell him too much on where she’d squirreled away and too clear on the ghost she’d done it with. Chances were hopefully that this were a nightmare of coincidences, but chances and luck were bedfellows and she’d stopped counting on luck to be on her side over that of its crude lover.

“We keep to the arrangement,” she decided. “You mind Zeus here and let me take these supplies. I’ll come back by dusk, wagon’s yours again and we don’t speak of this to no one.” The slew of options weren’t so much a slew as they were slender pickings and that this’d been the best of them proved the selection thin.

“Fine, Mrs. Adler. But, any sign of Dutch and the whole thing’s forfeit,” Pearson warned, jerking his hand out towards her, palm up. “And that means payment up front for the goods.”

Sadie’d already put a good chunk down at the store, the rest she had folded up in her saddlebags; the amount’d do a good number in depleting their recompense fund. They’d be down to a few hundred after this, but it’d beat having to come back into town and leave any more of a trail than they’d already stretched in their wake.

“You just don’t go harassing my horse,” she warned him, handing over the money. “She’s a good mare and you’s just a big ass.” Sadie hauled herself up to the driver’s bench, gathered up the reins and started the team moving with a snap of her wrists and a quick call.

-

Arthur’d never much felt strongly about Pearson all them years he’d run with the gang. Found him reliable enough, but bland in more than just his cooking; bit of a windbag about the good ol’ Navy days and had a holier-than-thou attitude about respect being accorded to him, but he’d been with them so long that the loyalty’d come assumed, the cooking come accustomed, and the bragging tales taken with salt.

What he disliked about Pearson, though, cropped up more in the animated exchanges what went on between Sadie and him over at the wagon. When he’d grabbed her arm, Arthur sighted on him quick down the barrel of the carbine, his trust towards loyalty shaken of late and his instincts too ready to preserve what he knew over this uncertain development.

Couldn’t hear a damn detail of it, set back in the trees the way he’d done. Over one of the ridges where the only real approach came at his peripheral, his lesson learned back when he’d served overlook on the Colm parlay. Always leave an exit and never leave it unguarded.

From up there, he could hear some shouting, vague and indistinct, but weren’t too different from the way those two acted at the best of times. Louder, now, and angrier, but weren’t some new development to stand out and warrant his intervention.

Whatever’d set them off settled after a bit, but he could see the tension rising in Sadie’s posture. Troubling, too, came that degree of drinking what’d consumed Pearson. The man could barely stand, fit only to put the bottle to his mouth, imbibe more, then make the whole situation worse by it.

When Sadie took the wagon, he watched Pearson languish against the tree a few minutes. That told him that the man’d be staying there a good while, so Arthur pulled back from the ridge and led Eceni through the woods to where he could intersect with the trail before Sadie made much distance, see what all she’d tell to explain the altercations. The repeater he kept slung over his shoulder, wary and ready.

“I thought you was going to shoot him for a minute there,” he said, leaned up on a youngling of a tree bordering the path as she drove the wagon around the bend.

Sadie hauled the team to a stop, shook her head; ain’t seemed surprised that he’d come to check on her, though irritated maybe. Most times there’d be any slight intimation of doubt in her skills and she’d react the same, that chip on her shoulder one he weren’t the fool to try and dislodge. “Drunken bastard’ve deserved it,” she muttered. Them words didn’t quite carry conviction over concern, something distracting her and he were damn sure it weren’t him in the way she’d accused him of the night before.

“Everything alright?” Arthur minded her tense posture, watched how her gaze shifted from side-to-side; came off like she felt exposed or watched, even hunted. “You ain’t exactly relaxed.” The words’d let her know her nerves were clear on display, not guarded or discarded the way she usually ran it.

Least she didn’t say it were nothing when she spoke up. “Pearson makes me twitchy,” she said with a pause, a shake of her head. “Reminds me of them bug-eyed bullfrogs.” The shudder felt off and he weren’t convinced that to be all; Sadie could be real evasive at times, but with them being up shit creek without paddles and the both of them knowing it, he figured she’d mention if there were a real danger or threat what pulled at her.

“You want me to ride back with you?” Arthur kept the offer casual, one last opportunity for her to shed whatever shades were chasing her thoughts. “That fool’s too drunk to run off with your horse. It’d get it done in half the time.”

Sadie glanced back as though Pearson might see them, despite the ridge of trees what hid Clemens Point from view. There rested some hesitance, like she might accept, then a shake of her head as she convinced herself otherwise. “No, Arthur.” She shifted the reins, resettled her grip on them as the pair of mares waited, docile, for the command to move. “You was right, I think. Too much coincidence with this and Strauss. Keep an eye on Pearson, make sure there ain’t nothing up.”

“Sure.” More that he considered it, the more he didn’t like it, but her angle made just as much sense. If there were problems afoot, or if Pearson were conspiring with others, they’d try to follow her or meet here once she’d left and he needed to stay put to make sure none of that happened. Arthur pushed off the tree with a nod, headed back into the woods to resume his vigil as she urged the team into motion again.

Weren’t no one what followed her out and Pearson? Well. Damn fool passed out drunk, snored off the hours that he had to sit and wait. Arthur spent it with a wary eye on the Point and the trails what led to it; smoked his way through a few cigarettes and muttered a dozen or so curses to the flies that started to swarm around him as the late afternoon stretched out its heat and humidity into evening.

Sadie made it back okay, wagon lightened. From where he stood, she seemed to enjoy kicking Pearson awake and sending him on his way. For his part, Arthur shadowed Pearson’s retreat, keeping to the trees. Man was passing drunk, headed into hangover, and red rimmed his eyes as he watched the road both ahead and behind. Like a buck ready to flee, hunted by a predator known and unseen. Weren’t his usual arrogance about it and that caused concern.

Nothing happened for all that. Pearson took off back towards Rhodes and Arthur mounted up, waited for Sadie near where the path joined the road, out of sight. Gave her the all clear as she rode up, so’s they could head back to Willowstead without trouble. Seemed it, at least, to be clear; only some part of him figured there something more going on than’d been told and he’d have to figure on it more later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This makes the final update of 2020 and what a dang year it has been. Sure, there's the bad things that all have happened, but I'm thinking more to the good things. I discovered Red Dead Redemption II this year after ages of avoiding it due to the heartbreak of RDR1. Yes, RDR2 broke my heart, but it also led me back into writing.
> 
> Which has led me here, to the latest update.
> 
> This update officially brings an end to the first notebook of the penned ASM draft! We are now 22 pages into notebook number two, which is a total of 250 pages. Things and plots are moving forward!
> 
> iluall and take care, ok?
> 
> \- Kichi @[KichiWhy](https://twitter.com/KichiWhy) (Twitter)


	35. Chapter X: Willowstead - 10: Stormy Horizons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a storm on the horizon and it has presented an opportunity that Dutch will not squander. Sadie has not decided whether to tell Arthur about this purported sighting of Dutch and, instead, looks to what allies they might have if things go sour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

Nightfall had stolen the sun from the sky, but otherwise did little to give respite to the heat that’d beaten down throughout the day. Instead, a staleness settled in the air what matched the stifling humidity and made the labour of storing their procured supplies equally the challenge with two of them as it’d been for her alone. Sadie’d thought it rough to unload the wagon in the prime of the day’s heat, had kept her actions to storing it all in the small barn, cooler inside and closer to the wagon. It ensured she weren’t long in returning to the Point; figured that the two of them could move what they needed to the cabin once the air cooled, only it ain’t cooled near enough to tolerate.

Even with the burden shared between her and Arthur, she stood parched and drenched in sweat after the last crate’d been hauled in. Sadie went so far as drawing a fresh bucket from the well with the sole intent and execution of pouring it over her head; it served to rinse of the worst of the weather’s clinging stain from her skin as it soaked her. The second bucket went half to quenching her thirst and it were only on the third draw that she figured herself barely cool enough, but ready to carry the bucket inside and share the relief of its cool water.

The mundanity of the tasks, the straightforward labour and unpacking of crates in relative peace, helped drain the tense energy from her. It dulled that paranoia of a trap’d laid around them what stood ready to snap shut. Honest work had its way of doing that, of leaving no effort available for worry after a long day’s toils. Weren’t the wisest means of dealing with the problem, the shadow of Dutch what Pearson had cast over her, but wise ain’t been her forte for years. Sadie needed the chance to breathe and figure on the issue, to know how much of it’d been flatulent air over real threat. Until then, she’d let the work sap the strength of caring from her, just a day or two, before she’d make the call.

‘Sides, ain’t no way she’d put Arthur in danger of falling ill again by telling him the hearsay; it’d leave her watching him wear down his lungs chasing down leads what she weren’t sure they could trust. _That_ she full on refused to entertain.

Inside the cabin turned out fouler for heat, plenty of it trapped throughout the day; Sadie grunted in disgust, leaving the bucket to prop the door open. Outside was, she hated admitting, cooler by a small margin and stood the chance to become more so as the night wore on. She’d intent to lure as much of that inside as possible, for the heat trapped inside would like as not cluster in the loft and that’d make two nights of foul sleep for her, each of them blamed for two very different sorts of heated distraction.

Sadie grabbed a tin mug up off the table and dipped it in the bucket, offering the water to Arthur, who’d leaned on the cupboards with crate of canned goods left on the floor next to him. His hands gripped the counter and he’d leaned his weight forward on them, breathing hard and focused on quelling the strain of it, forced into this break from storing cans and supplies by his troubled lungs.

This weather played a hard turn for him, full on contrary to what she’d intended when they turned south. Sadie ain’t been familiar with fall storms and the humidity what seemed to plague Lemoyne, all her time spent up north where it ran cold and dry. Weren’t the first time, now, that she felt that pang of concern that maybe this ain’t so great an idea, but the well of options ran shallow to start with and this left them stuck. She’d see it through, no matter what come of it at this point.

“Appreciate it,” he managed, taking the cup and draining it in three gulps that were scattered and broken by the wheezing rooted deep in his chest. Small salvation come through it being not choked quite so thick with the infection’s refuse like them first few weeks. She’d become too familiar with the sounds, knew better when to push him to rest, and this weren’t the time to. This whole thing a goddamned constant struggle balanced precariously on her impatience, but his face had colour, with the sheen of sweat on his skin being bright and not waxen.

Not healthy, but better.

Them small steps that were hard for her to accept, too used to leaping ahead to the end without the hazards of the means.

“There ought be a breeze soon,” she offered as her guess. “Sun’s all but down; it’ll cool soon.”

“Ain’t the heat,” he muttered, wiping at his lips. Arthur tossed the mug down into the wash basin with a frustrated grunt. “This damn air’s thicker than oil.”

Sadie walked over and fished the cup out, headed back to the bucket to draw herself a drink with it, parched still even after draining half the bucket out front. “We got nothing to worry on a few days at least,” were her attempt to salve it with the idea that they could rest up, keep from aggravating it further. “The heat’ll break soon and it’ll make light this air.” Founded on her conviction that this couldn’t last long this late in the year, even in the fairer weathers Lemoyne had.

Arthur pushed the crate to the corner with his foot, then looked her way to make some tired or resigned remark. He stopped before the words come out; colour rose up in his face and he looked off beyond her shoulder instead. “The hell happened out there?” he managed to rustle out, resolute in how he weren’t looking right at her while he spoke.

“What?” Sadie looked behind her, then at herself; her clothes were drenched from the dousing, cool and clinging intimately to her skin, though drying out bit-by-bit. “This? Cooled me off good.”

He stayed firm in looking at or past her face, but she realized what them glances were when his gaze chanced to wander down and linger upon her chest before he caught himself and looked away. She smiled and laughed at this shy turn about him. “You’re a right gentleman degenerate,” she commented, crossing her arms in the way that’d save him from seeing where the water and clothing stuck most fluidly to her curves.

Arthur gave a short, guttural laugh. “No, I ain’t,” he argued the point, on habit more than principle at this stage. All the while kept his eyes up far as he could, the flush settling more in his neck as she covered off the most enticing of them assets. “I only think it ain’t right to treat you like some show.”

Sadie couldn’t stop herself from laughing again, the weight of her altercation with Pearson coming off her shoulders. “Last night, you was becoming pretty familiar with me,” she reminded him. She’d done the same, too; a flush crept across her cheeks in recollection.

“There ain’t a thing wrong with it,” she continued, clearing her throat, “if we’re both serious about what we done.” The look she tossed his way carried that dare, the challenge, even her want for one of them to put words to it. To draw the damn pistol and end this showdown of loud assertions, distracting intimacies, and complicated emotions.

“I’m full serious on it,” she added, shedding the jest to make sure he knew she weren’t dodging no bullet for all she ain’t fired first. “So best get used to my enjoying the view, okay?”

There felt some ridiculous cant to how they talked about it; he made a rueful sort of chuckle, seemed about as ready to not talk on it as she felt. “Okay, Mrs. Adler,” he said, sardonic.

Sadie winced a degree at that; her wants were clear for him, but paired with her past? There were parts of it what were still tender to the touch. “Stick with Sadie, Arthur,” she said. “Leave the Adlers as cover.”

Arthur watched her, expression softened from the embarrassment to some blend of care and concern. He walked over, raised his hands up, cupped her chin in them, and looked at her. Looked at her, intent on just her, nothing else and that focus sparked warm discomfort in her gut, the intensity of it new; he nodded once. “Alright, Sadie,” he said. The way his voice carried her name jolted awake that prior desire, but he’d released her and stepped back before she full realized it, wearing that half-cocked smile of his.

“Goddamn trying to be distracting again?” she challenged him, hiding the bit where that’d made her a bit too breathless to keep the upper hand.

“No, ma’am,” he promised, stepping back further; he moved into the kitchen, to finish up putting things away.

Least that distracted them both away from talking about what’d gone on at the Point, for all it brought back that flustered distraction what’d kept her awake all last night. Sadie weren’t sure yet what to do on Pearson’s information, only running with that instinct to keep the knowledge of Pearson’s claims close until she were damn sure it’d been Dutch the man’d seen. That’d mean trouble, but she had to know for sure before she’d put Arthur in that position of knowing the man what’d near as raised him were anywhere but disappeared.

-

Two days of hot sun and humidity made Saint Denis akin to a baker’s oven, scorching and relentless in its sway over the city districts. Ladies fanned themselves fervently and ice became an expensive, sought-after delight that melted moments after its prized acquisition. All thoughts were consumed by what pastimes might bear relief from the torrid haze and few could mount the energy to pursue any such ideas.

Then, a morning dawned with the first hint that the heat might break, murky red clouds crowding on the horizon with long, cottony fingers stretching closer and closer to the city. This changed the pitch of the town from lethargic to fevered, boxes and goods drawn indoors as the locals moved to counter and prepare for what lurked on the horizon, dark with its promise of chaos.

The Cartwright residence had a bustling, dichotomic energy about it that complemented the shift within Saint Denis. Equally as many staff pulled and latched shutters as others threw open doors and swept out leafy debris. Steady deliveries at the side entrance gave rise to the anticipation of an event and fed into this atmosphere of giddy expectations, joyful in contrast to the sombre anticipation the working class demonstrated in their securing of goods and possessions.

Escorted into the main office of Samuel Cartwright, Dutch made a remark to that effect; an observation stated as he drew smoke from the length of his cigar, rich and satisfying.

Samuel laughed, the sound both pleased and distracted as he put his signature to a document and shifted to the next, buried beneath the responsibilities of his legitimate business and that broad network of criminal undertakings which made his target a ripe one. “There is indeed an event on the horizon,” he agreed in a tenor of assured confidence, eyes kept to the paperwork.

“You hold me in suspense,” came his challenge, mild in tone and words. Dutch knew the man had more of the entertainer’s flourish than his sister and he plied on it with that suggestion of being teased, taunted by intimation over information.

This broke the man’s concentration, lured out that showmanship; Samuel looked up and gestured to the still open windows of his office, offering a brilliant view of dark clouds mingling on the horizon, slow and inexorable in their spin towards the city. “Saint Denis lies well in the path of certain cyclones,” he said, a vaunted flourish twitching his hand upwards with the words. “We, the affluent residents of the city, have taken to the celebration of these mighty storms over obsessing upon the ruination.”

Cyclone. Dutch looked to the clouded distance, where greys and deep hues blended on nature’s dangerous palette, reflected brief on how starkly different his circumstances were this time that a storm came calling in the avenues of, or the waterways beyond, Saint Denis. Solid ground provided better solace than open sea had, protection offered by the four walls and roof of the Cartwright residence, of the rooms he himself had let in the city. “You choose to give tribute to nature’s fury,” he noted, this a confirmation of the arrogance that the wealthy possessed.

“Those of the mortal realm hold no sway over her,” came his rather enthused response, “and so, yes!” Unrepentant of this warped worship, Samuel but grinned and calmed himself. “Understand, though, that we do this with purpose also,” he added, fingers brushing against the red ledger on his desk.

An essence of intrigue, though his eyes snapped quick to the book and drew away with careful effort. Dutch allowed the line to be laid out and baited, all the better to learn of the aspirations Samuel held over becoming prey to his vision. “What purpose can there be in the storm but to stave off wind and rain?” he mused, allowing the metaphor to push his agenda.

“Business,” said with cool emphasis, a reminder that drew Samuel’s eyes back to the sheets of paper meant to consume his afternoon. “Inclement weather limits the law’s power of intervention, which serves our shared passions flawlessly.”

Dreamers were wont to seek beyond their means and this man lived frequently in the clouds. “Inclement weather also limits our ability to take action,” Dutch intoned.

“Ah, but it does not limit our ability to plan it!” Samuel clapped his hands together, childishly giddy. “Host the wealthy few within a den of their prized vices and you will find their tongues loosen. Pride gives rise to boasting and myself, as host, benefits from all that my staff may hear.”

Dutch arched a brow. “You fleece them for leads,” his remark, steady and level. Risky proposition, that, for any leads made stood the risk of being linked back to this engagement of vices in the absence of virtues that had been planned.

“ _You_ will,” Samuel corrected with a shake of his head. “Myself? I will be preoccupied, as I often am during such times, and would have you oversee the execution of this affair.” There came no pause for discussion, no room for acceptance or denial; it seemed his role secured long before Dutch had heard of it, an unpleasant surge of control exerted over him. “With fair compensation, I assure you,” added dismissively as he flourished his signature at the bottom of an invoice.

This gave Dutch pause, sudden opportunity thrust upon him served also the warning of risk. He narrowed his eyes at the insinuation that he take on this task offered or be cut out. His eyes fell on the red ledger, his primary aim; full accounting of the Cartwrights, key to their manifest, illicit fortune, and clues to where the reclusive siblings stashed it. Patience was required to make those his, this fortune true over the Braithwaite and Gray lies. Bide his time and such opportunities as this were what he needed to achieve the end goal, bitter as the fountain of such chances tasted on his tongue.

The expectation of his interest, even the measure therein, cut itself short as the door at the rear of the office slammed open. Dutch let his hand rest near one of his revolvers, cautiously alert, but Samuel, with had his back exposed to the arrival, only shook his head and sighed. Serah slowly walked in, her gait more a limp and her path uneven, made unsteady by virtue of the half-empty bottle of whiskey she carried in one hand. The other hand carried a bottle still sealed. Each of them earned a baleful look as she limped slow across the office, pausing only to drink again of the open bottle.

“Miss Cartwright,” he greeted. This new offer of responsibility timed to this haggard appearance of the lady shed insight on what it was that Samuel might be busy with. This woman had had shown restraint to excess of drink, for all that she could drain a wine glass in one toast, but this demonstrated complete inebriation to a degree that he had not expected of her. Her brother, perhaps, needed to attend to this flagrant break from responsibility.

Serah glared at him and moved past, but not before shoving him aside with her shoulder. She slammed the door shut as she departed out the main door of the office, anger evident at some foul the world had played on her.

“Pay no heed to my sister,” Samuel said. For the first time, his voice carried a shadow of thin fatigue. “Her social acumen suffers a severe blow during such weather. It is my responsibility, as her older brother, to keep an eye on her until the storm itself passes.”

“Do not the promise of libations and opportunity please her?” He quirked up a brow, a casual nudge for more information to her recalcitrance.

Samuel laughed, a weaker sound, and leaned back in his chair. “Serah is quite capable at work, but less so at play. I’ve had her assisting you as a matter of trust – mine in her, you understand.” And not his in Dutch; Serah had been the influence to ensure Cartwright priorities were maintained until this new contact of the family could be proven as reliable. “It is not for her love of the social coup that you seek.”

Expectedly sane intentions and executions; Dutch held no offense, this conclusion long ago established. He had used her, in turn, to learn what he could of the odd tension strung between the siblings and their paranoia to how frail their influence on criminal society truly was. The less she enjoyed the task, the more cautious and prepared the Cartwrights sought to be. “I am hurt,” he said with no truth to it, a slight smile, conspiratorial, allowed instead. “All that we have done and no care for me.”

“No care for anyone, good man.” Samuel read through the next few sheets demanding his attention, distracted by their contents. Words slipped away from him with greater ease than they had yet, shedding light on himself and his sister. “Serah, you see, was first implicated as responsible in the unfortunate passing of our father. The resulting treatment left her distrustful of all but myself.”

“Quite.” Dryly spoken, this frank truth of her brash behaviour needing no embellishment.

The late Samuel Cartwright Sr had been shot six times in the back, per the information courted by Trelawny, alongside the tidbit that it occurred after doubt had been cast on the siblings’ relation to the wealthy businessman less than a week after their induction into his will. Dutch did not dampen the mood with such trivialities, instead drawing in this freely given detail.

“Then she will not be assisting in my oversight of the festivities?” Dutch nudged the conversation from the past; no need to draw attention to his interest in it. The words gave confirmation, as well, that he would take on the task being offered. Unfettered by either sibling for the duration of this purported cyclone would give him ample opportunity to discover more about this family and fortune.

“She will be doing nothing but whiskey and morphine,” Samuel stated, picking up the red ledger from the table and setting it in a drawer, slid shut and locked. The key he placed into his own pocket, regrettably. “I will be occupied ensuring she does not overindulge in either. This weather causes her quite the pain, you see.” Calmly stated, as though a passing remark akin to the very same weather he referred to. “When questioned about our father’s untimely death, she was quite determined to make no confession to the tune that the law sought. Very persuasive though beatings can be, she refused; bit off her own tongue to spite them.” This with the patient shrug of a brother who could not but help who he played at being related to. “In turn, they provided no doctor to care for that or to set the bones; little healed the way God intended and stormy weather ever since puts her in foul humours.”

Dutch absorbed this insight into the woman’s dark moods and silence; feigned surprise with raised eyebrows and stored the details for later. “That does explain her adamant silence.”

“Indeed.” Samuel stood, extended his hand to shake it. “Everything you need for expenses goes into the black ledger,” he stated. “The red you will not need. Make notes of any information the staff find.” The man straightened and smoothed down his fine vest and coat. “And, Mr. van der Linde, make no mistake that I place great trust in you,” he added, voice cooled, “but also do I leave great insurance in place to protect my assets. I have ensured that my staff and security are set to respect you, but each last one of them will kill you if you try sabotage.”

This served as encouragement, a challenge that Dutch would rise to, and his mouth split in a wide, knowing grin. “I would not have it any other way, Mr. Cartwright,” he intoned. This promised to be most illuminating, an opportunity to study his opponent and set his targets; he would have it serve him equally as it served the Cartwrights, for it would be now that he could find the weaknesses to commence their downfall.

-

Three days of heat laying oppressively thick over Willowstead, and the most of Lemoyne she figured, passed before the weather broke with wind and rain in a powerful storm. Half through the night it came that the thunder shook the cabin and the rain started its lashing upon the roof. Sadie learned an unfortunate truth at that same time: The wood planks and shingles above her bedroll were not impenetrable to water. She found herself wakened by the steady drip of water onto her face and yet more seeping through her bedroll.

Rolled onto her back, she glared up into the murky darkness and wiped away the drops that’d landed on her skin. Muttering some fair spell of curses, she sat up and felt around, but a similar pattern of damp extended through the stretch of her reach. That meant she’d not be likely to find a dry corner to resume sleep in and, with another curse, she decided to give up the cause for the time being. She dragged on her slacks, pulled together her now damp bedroll, and retreated to the main floor as quietly as she could. Weren’t much challenge there, the wind and thunder loud enough to quell her footsteps into obscurity as she laid out the bedding over the chairs near the slumbering fire. They’d kept it low as possible these past few days to stop the heat from building up worse, but there remained life enough to the embers that it’d leech out the water and leave the fabrics dry.

Arthur lay asleep on the bed, firmly recused from the world of waking, kept dry, and looked to be resting comfortably; she considered his invitation from before their supply run, of sleeping there with him, but with the hour stretched late, she remained firm against any disruption what could stall the rest he needed to recover. No matter how the temptation pulled at her, whispered how warm it looked to be if she just lay down next to him.

That weren’t an option, damn it; Sadie remanded herself to the table and grabbed the small oil lamp kept there. She lit it and trimmed the wick low, to cast a faint glow as she glared daggers at the storm outside and smoked a cigarette. The shades of sleep that’d clung to her through the descent from the loft were steadily pushed back by the thoughts of where they were, who they’d seen. Sadie distracted herself best she could, got up for a bit to stoke the fire and start a pot of coffee. The weather kept raging loud and the rain falling hard, meaning she’d not be getting no sleep up in the loft and she gave up on the concept.

Once she had a cup of coffee in her hand and had sat herself back at the table, she took a few minutes to pull her hair from its braid, combing fingers through it as she worked at the problem of Dutch and Pearson. Strauss she could ignore the coincidence of, for he’d been bound for Blackwater and there weren’t no reason to suspect it otherwise, given that he’d been travelling with others. Trelawny filled the role of one more risk to think on, his attachments and loyalties explained to her by Abigail as being particularly fluid when trouble started squeezing down on him, but quite what that meant for them danced outside her grasp. Ain’t been there long enough to know what it all meant, what each person brought to the table for risks and rewards.

Right then, Sadie needed something familiar that she could put measure to. Some goddamn form of win to make this route to Lemoyne take on more sense than risk after the weather’d proven harsh on Arthur’s lungs and the people too plentifully familiar to preserve their anonymity.

Cornered by that and short allies beyond Arthur, who she’d no mind to burden further with the intricacies of Pearson claiming he’d seen Dutch, she went for paper and a pencil, started scratching out a letter to Charles. That she could do without worries of danger, him being the only other one privy to Arthur’s true situation; she owed him an update, after the state Arthur’d been in at Van Horn, and it helped her put down words what weren’t talk of trouble or storms what might darken the horizon.

Excepting the damn storm what’d been forcing the damn rain through the damn roof.

> _Charles,_
> 
> _Two months will have passed since last we spoke and much has happened. We headed west, as you know, but could not scarcely settle in Valentine before I did encounter my husband’s brother. It was not the heartfelt reunion they deserved, but my husband was not well enough to receive them and so I did not speak to them of his ill health. He and his wife fare well and send their regards, along with the greetings from their son._
> 
> _Mr. Adler has since recovered from his fevered cough, but the doctor bade him winter in Lemoyne where the air carries less frosty chill. We have heeded his advice and are retired to Willowstead until spring thaws the mountain passes._
> 
> _If your travels bring you near, pray send word and we will host you for dinner. Mr. Adler would be most relieved to know you are well._
> 
> _Callahan & Caroline Adler _

“What’re you up to?”

Arthur’s voice was rough with sleep and she looked his way, startled from re-reading the letter’s careful words. He’d raised himself up on an elbow, watching her at the table. His hair stuck out at odd angles, sleep-mussed, and his eyes weren’t fully open nor focused as he blearily worked his way out of slumber. The sight of him in that unguarded moment brought up that heady rush of something she’d been feeling for him increasingly. Right then, watching him wake himself up while trying to start a conversation with her, she figured it fell somewhere between affection and attraction.

“Writing to Charles,” she said, laying the completed letter flat. Sadie twisted in the chair, leaning her arm over the back of it so she could watch him blinking away the haze of slumber. That she bore a slight, fond smile in the watching of it stayed shadowed, the oil lamp’s low glow cast from behind her.

His brow furrowed, mind recalling bits and pieces of scattered thoughts. “He was at Van Horn,” he mumbled, more to himself as the understanding started to phase in, his memory less broken by the gaps the fever caused. Weren’t a quick process, this, but he’d started patching together what’d happened from what she said, set it against his own fevered recollections to manage some grasp of them first few days.

Sadie nodded and reached back for the lamp, twisting the wick further up, adding to its light. “I’m surprised you remember,” she remarked, quieter. Subdued at her own stark memories from those first few days. “You was real sick. We both... Well, we both figured you as much in the grave as I’d dragged you out of it.”

Arthur hauled himself out of bed, rubbing a hand down his face before he stood up and crossed the room. His bare feet were quiet on the wood planks and she thought to snap at him to at least put on boots, but she’d come down barefoot herself and weren’t in much a position to push the point. He’d stripped down to his union suit for sleep, much as she generally went down to a shirt or shift at the end of each day, and with the fire nudged back to warm waking, it’d do to keep off a chill. With a quick huff of breath out, he sat down at the second chair and pulled the letter closer, intent on reading it.

“Hey!” She’d turned back to the table, made a half-hearted attempt to grab it alongside her half-hearted protest.

“You read Pearson’s mail,” he reminded her, holding it back from her reach with a sleepy grin.

“He deserved it,” she countered, resolute.

“Tell me again why it is you don’t,” he challenged in return, angling the paper to catch the lantern light. He refrained from a dramatic reading of it, either in kindness or the knowledge that she’d kick him in the shin if he’d tried. Kept silent as he scanned the words and translated the meanings she’d tucked in there. “Callahan?” was his only question, the name she’d attributed to him in the signing.

Sadie crossed her arms to keep from snatching the paper back and rested them on the table, shrugged up a shoulder to the question. “Heard Dutch and Hosea use it to refer to you when we was around Clemens Point,” she said. “Charles is smart. He’d know it means we’re near Rhodes.”

A quiet moment that preceded a slow, genuine nod to understand and approve both. “That’s pretty smart, Sadie,” he said, smoothing the letter back down on the table. “You ain’t wrong. He’ll figure it out. Charles always was smarter that way.” He scratched at his chest, a habit he’d developed in ignoring the ache of his chest, or so she’d figured on. “What I ain’t sure on is whether we ought leave that opening for him to come on around. We got enough folk ‘round here we know, don’t we?”

“Charles ain’t Pearson and he ain’t Strauss,” she replied, shifted to prop her chin up on her arm, elbow on the table. “There ain’t no harm in having someone good ‘round to offset all them sour bits is what I figure.”


	36. Chapter X: Willowstead - 11: On Desires Unmet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's one tried, tested, and true way to pass the time when it's storming too hard to go outside and that may just be to finish what started in the chair before the rabbit done burned up from the heat. Arthur and Sadie become intimately familiar with each other in light of this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

Sadie glanced outside, the sun of morning barely lighting the air against the dark of the rain. “Looks like a full miserable day,” she said, a shift of topic. She’d some uncertainty, talking about the others. Deeply seated, the fear, that he’d forget his promise to heal up his lungs and instead go track them down, ever the protector. The fixer what never looked to fix himself. The way he reacted over hearing about John in Valentine kept constant presence in her mind, and ripe as she ever were for a fight, that weren’t the sort of one what bore repeating.

Arthur followed her glance and took in the state of the storm before he nodded his agreement. “After that damn heat, it’ll be nice to have cool air again,” he said, scratching at the back of his neck. “All this rain, though.” The way that his words trailed off had her looking to him, catching the hint of suggestion in his expression. “Seems good reason to stay in bed,” he finished with a shrug, a hapless sort of smile.

She laughed, short and sweet. “Maybe for you,” she returned, an annoyed gesture made upwards. “Rain’s leaking in. It’ll be impossible to sleep ‘til things dry out.” Looking up to the loft, she only realized he’d reached for her when his hand closed over her wrist on the table. Startled some, she looked his way and caught the moment when that smile stretched into a cheeky grin.

“Ain’t never said we’d be sleeping,” he clarified, an eyebrow quirked up. Invitation implied as his thumb stroked over the back of her hand and the motion seemed subtle, almost shy for all he’d been laying out the foundation of this fledgling seduction.

Sadie wanted to scream at her hesitation, at the dryness that caught in her mouth. This intimation he offered was what she’d wanted, a part of her desires since admitting to herself that she wanted Arthur Morgan in more ways than one. She licked her lips, a half smile fleeting as she sought more certainty, stronger footing in her own thoughts to quash that hesitance. “Way I recall it, you was afraid of what a predatory woman like me’d do to a pretty little thing like you,” she commented, a throwback to their conversation in Valentine. So long and yet not long ago in this year when time itself’d gone and thrown any sense of its passing to the wind.

All he done were to chuckle, pulling her arm gently towards him and his other hand, rested on the table, started to trace lightly at the soft underside of her arm. “Don’t recall fighting you off by the fire,” he commented with a noncommittal shrug.

“Until dinner burned,” came her dry reply, the wit hard to maintain when the touch of his fingers sent pleasurable shocks through her arm. She weren’t full sure how to handle Arthur in a playful mood no more, much less this iteration that made her wanting burn that much hotter. Months without cheer made it odd to see; welcome, but new again.

And then the overbearing aspect where she wanted him playful and just damn well _wanted_ him.

“Good thing we ain’t got food cooking,” he said, standing up. Arthur pulled light on her arm, inviting her to join him, but there weren’t the slightest hint of force in the action. All that degenerate attitude and here he stood, wanting to make sure she were equal in the desire to pass the time with him and hell if that didn’t make it hard not to take full advantage of him right then and there. She let the tug lure her up, dare made by stepping up against him. Taller than her and broader, still stronger in sheer force, but she realized about then that he’d no look in his eyes what’d say he’d use that to take nothing.

“You, sir, sound like you’re suggesting we finish what we started,” she murmured, warmth kindled in her gut as she pressed up against him, felt that definite interest what’d stirred in him pressing at her. And her own interest? Still unsated from the rabbit-ruined session, giving her impatience fuel that it hardly needed.

“Shame, I figure, if we let it burn out like dinner done,” he mused, a chuckle made to his own humour. With that gentle pull, he guided her back towards the bed with him; Arthur sat down first, coaxing her forward, hand moving up her arm and the other resting at her waist. His smile, more a grin, made her laugh, relaxed.

Here they were, awkward like two kids in love and- Sadie shook her head to chase that thought down, to draw back to the baser desires here and leave the complications of emotion beyond attraction aside. She moved closer, up onto the bed by her knees pressing down on either side of his legs, coming to rest on his lap. Replication of their pose in the chair, but far more comfortable and spacious without the constraints of the chair arms. She let herself be there a moment, wrapping her arms around his neck, head resting against his shoulder. Her fingers stroked idly through the hair grown thick and long at the back of his neck. “I’d not thought to ever want this,” she said, quiet in that singular reflection.

She’d not expected much, mind. Months spent on the run, watching the gang, seeing the weakest links, and how he’d fought to keep it all together. Made her want to scream at how Dutch squandered it, squandered _him_. Made her want to have and keep Arthur, to hold him away from those that abused and exploited him. There carried an intensity in it what’d been different from the passion of her marriage; weren’t more nor less, but different in ways that enticed her and made her want to never let go again.

Arthur hesitated, brief, though his arousal remained evident, firm and pressing up against her where she rested on him. She moved to explore that; shifted her hips back and slid forward in a way that made him tense, stilled by the sensation. Sadie smiled to herself, repeated that slow grind and savoured the low sound it enticed from him. Raising her head, she kissed him. No hesitance now, the dryness gone from her mouth as she met his, touched his lips with her tongue as she dipped firm and deep. His hands started to track along the curve of her side, fingers gripping reflexively at her hips when she rocked down on him once more.

Drawing back, indulging in that desire warming her, Sadie looked him in the eyes and searched over his face. Saw that sleepy desire, that odd patient conflict he struggled with, like he didn’t quite feel right to take something intangible as his own, no matter how openly it had been offered. She pressed her forehead against his. “Don’t mean I’ll let it slide from me,” she added, keeping her hips moving with slow, sensual pressure, that heat spreading through her nerves like wildfire.

Sadie arched an eyebrow up and pushed down on his shoulders, laying him back on the bed as she leaned forward, kissed him, and savoured that he kissed her back. She moved her hands to his chest, holding him down as she pulled herself further up his thighs, coming to rest over his groin, knees pressed into the mattress on either side of him.

She could feel him beneath her, hard and eager at even these light, plying touches and those soft teasings of his words and her hands. She rocked her hips, testing his resolve, and raised her head to watch his face as she did it again, revelling in the at once unfamiliar and pleasing sensation it surged in her. Arthur ground his teeth on his lower lip, eyes reflexively closed. Guttural and wanting, a groan slipped from him. His hands moved slower on her hips, encouraging and guiding her to an encore. She gave a throaty laugh and kissed him, freeing his lip so that she could catch it with her teeth, pulling on it as a shiver of pleasure moved down her spine. She released it and ran her tongue soothingly over it, but he moved for her mouth insistently, testing and tasting her resolve as he kept at it, deepening it in defiance of any idea they needed to breathe through this. Sadie moved her hands down his chest, tracing the faded lines of muscle lost to his illness; it were slow in returning, but on the mend and firm to resist her weight, her touches. Wool itched at her and she ignored it until nearer the plane of his stomach. Here she began to toy with the line of buttons, one by one freeing them to allow her fingertips to brush skin where she had been forced to stop her exploration when the rabbit burned in the fireplace.

Arthur reluctantly broke the kiss, breathing staggered and heaving, but did not stop; he moved his lips along her neck, kissing a smooth line to her collar, where he elicited a sharp breath with a firm bite. She could feel his grin against her skin and retaliated by increasing the rhythm and pressure of her hips atop him, earning a terse groan for the effort.

Two could and would play at that game, Mr. Morgan.

Short nails pressed into her back as he moved his hands, finding the loose tuck of her shirt and slipping beneath it. He raised the cloth higher, tracing along her spine and leaving a tingling, hot sensation in his wake. She found her breath escaping her, heat spreading and desire blurring the feel of the cool air, obscuring the idea of a world beyond them. Beyond this chance to claim the desire that’d been burning in her.

Sadie left off his buttons a few moments, straightening up to help him divest her of the shirt and cast it aside. This left nothing to her attire from the waist up, bindings and vest, jacket, all that abandoned during the nights. The coolness of the air touched her breasts, heaving with each breath, and she felt that slight, self-conscious thought, fleeting, that this were the first time since Jake that she’d been nearer to naked with a man and intending more. Arthur hesitated not at all, hand to her neck to drawn her down, kiss her. His freed hand quested, palm curving along the side of her breast, calloused touch triggering sharp, pleasing sensations.

Sadie let herself give sound to that, a moan of pleasure, as his fingers brushed a tender circle around the nipple, firm and sensitive. She braced a hand against the bed and shifted needfully, her wanting intense after their failed intimacy, after chasing him for longer than she’d admitted to. She went to loosen her pants, moving her hand down inside of them, kissing him harder as she touched her own hot, slick skin. Her fingers worked at herself, hips still moving with that rhythmic need, feeling his erect flesh rubbing between their layers, pushed up against her hand and she moaned again. Lust’d been stranger for months and she immersed herself in it, refamiliarized herself with it, with how a few fingers could intensify it.

The hand on her breast tensed and she heard him utter her name, as though plying her to slow, but it drove her further, placing more pressure down against him, back and forth and he began to shudder, twitching against the back of her hand until a slow warmth, wet, spread there and the tension began to ebb from his muscles. She realized a moment later what that meant, stilling her own hand as she pushed herself upright, looked down at him in disbelief.

“Did you just-?”

Arthur dropped his head back to the bed, breathing hard; he licked his lips and nodded a second later. “Sorry,” murmured like it’d make amends for the fact he’d finished right as they’d gotten started.

Sadie hung in that moment between passion and denial, all things stalled until she let herself collapse down on him with a groan, pulling her hand out from her trousers, slick and shining with her want – denied a second time. “Damn it,” she muttered, rolling off of him, figuring it done without her.

Again.

-

They lay like that a time, staring up at the wood plank ceiling that doubled as the loft’s flooring, listening to the rain. Arthur felt the burning in his ears, ain’t no pretending that he weren’t embarrassed to have spent so quickly. Woke aroused as he had, wanting her as he watched her at the table; all that went and gave him too much the head start. Seeing her straddling him, shirt aside and face hot with need, almost did him in. But when she started on herself, so freely taking the same pleasure as she allowed him, that’d claimed him completely. Ain’t been able to stop it. Too much mounted desire, or too old a man to have stamina; no matter the reason, it’d happened and too soon.

As his breath evened and she moved, looking ready to leave the bed, Arthur moved equal fast to grab her wrist and pull her back his way. “Where you goin’?” he asked, shifting back onto the bed and pulling her to join him. Ignored that surge of exhaustion that came from release, told it to hold its damn horses because he weren’t done yet and it don’t matter how old he’d gotten, weren’t right to leave a lady without her pleasure.

“To bed,” she muttered, though she weren’t much fighting him on this. Hopeful, maybe, or still hot, with skin flush and lips near to bruised from the pressure of their kissing.

“Don’t be foolish,” he grumbled, turning on his side to lay next to her, encouraging her with a touch on her shoulder to rest on her back beside him. Arthur let his hand stretch over her stomach, pressing down lightly. “We ain’t done yet.” This he said with a half-cocked grin, an eyebrow quirked up as he slid his hand down, fingers working to loosen her trousers further. The suggestion were clear, but he waited and watched that burn of lust in her eyes.

“You were,” she complained, but when her hands moved, it weren’t to stop him so much as help pull them down and shift them off, kicked into a pile somewhere to the floor. Sadie licked her lips, her back arching up, showing that her body still clear wanted. Equal to how her actions spoke of her mind wanting the same.

Arthur readied his counter, that this weren’t about one or the other over the _both_ of them, but she turned her head, pushed her lips against his, sinking her tongue into his mouth, against his in her hunger to sate that needful desire. Arthur worked to deliver, letting his hand move to where his fingers could brush at the light hair, delve into the smooth, wet warmth folded between her legs. She shuddered and shifted, widening the gap between her thighs, whimpering with the desire that’d done its best to guide her.

He broke the kiss and trailed his lips along her chin, biting the soft skin near her ear and chuckling as he cursed him, his fingers teasing and slow to push one inside her. He played that way for a time, rubbing and indulging in that velvety feel of her before he worked a second finger in. That had her draw in a sharp breath, hips lifting encouragingly, and were a bit of a bastard thing he followed it with. He withdrew both fingers and ignored the noise of complaint, instead rubbing firm circles along the folds of skin, against the core of her heat where he knew it’d be most sensitive. She cursed again, needy, and one hand clenched on the sheets, the other lifted to her mouth in biting the back of, to quiet herself. This he took as invitation to return the two fingers to penetration, sliding them in and out in a steady rhythm as he found and trailed teasing pressures against that spot within her that made her jerk. He leaned over her, kissing the hand she’d sunk her teeth into, looking her in the eyes as he took one of her fingers into his mouth, sucking on it as he worked her, pressed inside of her to find those spots that made her twitch, his thumb working the same outside of her. Sadie glared, or tried to, but he brushed some sensitive point or other, derailing her flustered irritation. Cocky, laughing, he drew his tongue along her finger, opened his mouth some little more to draw another in, sucking softly, teasing each knuckle with his teeth. She seemed ready to bite her hand to bleeding, twitching and shifting beneath him, then he felt the pulsating, the spasm of muscles around his fingers as she found the release she’d assumed off the table. He let her ride it, withdrawing his hand only as she slowed each shudder, falling back with relaxed limbs on the bed. He wiped his hand on his leg and shifted back, pulling her with him, away from the dampness on the sheets.

“ _Now_ , we done,” he informed her, laughing when she smacked his shoulder.

Arthur drew the wool blanket up higher, covering them both as they lay, sweating and spent in differing degrees; he made sure she’d be comfortable, ignoring that faint stickiness within his own union suit for the time being. She let him, stretching out and up against him, back to his chest, and he settled his arm over her hip, atop the blanket. Holding without any force; weren’t meant to keep her, just wanted to feel if she slipped away. His other hand propped up his head, looking down at the mussed state of her hair, loose from its normal braid, the tone of her shoulder as she let her heart calm from the high.

Satisfied though he felt, he couldn’t quite shake that damn shadow that haunted the back of his thoughts, cropped up once his own pleasure’d been sated and ignored until hers had been met. Sex were one thing. Arthur knew it, solo and with others, but what’d it get him before? A lost son. A failed proposal. He’d taken to stripping it down to the carnal satisfaction of the act to keep from attachment. Never been the romantic after what he fooled himself into with Mary. Eliza’d been right to stick with his support for their child, but she’d been dead long and he’d never full loved her the way he’d loved Mary.

Hell. That even count as love? He’d seen only the good of her, blamed the rest on her family ties, his own dark reputation, or other fool notions. Held her like some perfect solution, but she’d not changed and he just as much couldn’t. Two worlds and he’d looked on hers like through rose-shaded lenses; he’d never fit and she’d never let him.

Arthur didn’t much care for himself, but he’d come to terms with that ugly bastard part of him. Seemed wrong, though, to take this pleasure with Sadie without understanding what she full wanted. What she thought of it; mind that it were a real down thought to deal on after a grand tussle in the sheets. He shifted some, still needed to speak to it, and so he cleared his throat.

“What’s it we’re doin’ here, Sadie?” he asked, aiming for a neutral tone of sorts.

“Sleeping off the rain,” she replied, voice softer in the wake of their intimacy. The pause weighted heavy and she ended it with a slow, impatient drawing of breath. “We _had_ ,” she added, with emphasis on that second bit, “been enjoying the moment. Quiet-like.”

He could feel the slow coil of tension start up in her shoulders, stretch down into her back. He smoothed the blanket over her hip, trying to ease that before this all undid what they’d taken pleasure in. “It’s just-“ He stalled on the words, never that good with talking in the ways Hosea and Dutch’d been. They’d always been his measure, the bar he needed to rise to and could never quite hit. His words were best when threatening, really, and weren’t no way he’d apply that against her. “You’s a fine woman,” he tried again. “And it’s clear that much as you fancy me, I’m fair fancying on you.” A little too much, given his misfire.

“Ain’t that enough, Arthur?” Sadie sounded almost tired by the words, or maybe by release; some complex mix of it, he figured, same as he felt bringing it up when he couldn’t chase them thoughts away.

“Ought to be,” were the honest way to say it, though it didn’t salve or solve the issue. “It’s that...” he paused, cursing his lack of conversational fortitude. Sarcasm and anger were easy to convey. This, less so. “Dutch always said I were too bull-headed to be a romantic and I figure him right on that. I ain’t sweet, and I ain’t much good at the courting games. If that’s what you want, I ain’t that. You come so far, and what you done at Beaver Hollow... damn. Well, that saved my life and we both know it. Thinking we ain’t doing or having what you want in this? Kills me some inside.”

Sadie lay quiet a moment, taking that in, thinking. She moved, rolled back to face him, and curled her arm as a pillow under her head. Her other hand reached for his face, fingers pushing aside the strands of hair what’d grown too long. She stared at him a long moment, brushing them bits of hair back in a way that he wanted her to keep at for some time. Calmed him and warmed him; made him feel like this could be a moment he could have. Maybe even keep for a spell. Felt good and he wanted to savour it.

“I don’t care what Dutch says you is and ain’t,” she said, venom laced within the name and nothing else. “I ain’t sure even you full know what you is and ain’t.” These words came softer, like he were a skittish horse, ready to flee and damn if he didn’t sometimes feel that way when it come to tender moments like this. She’d rare shared this kind of patience with him or anyone, for all she felt free to share her opinion plenty. “I seen you talk about all the bad you done, but I also seen you do better by it. That, Arthur, is what changed my thoughts on you and it damn hurts that you don’t let yourself hold tighter to them good parts of you.”

All his worth tied up in the gang, in Dutch’s ideals, in Hosea’s teachings. All his life spent on the wrong side of the law, started young with a father what didn’t care for legal goodness. “Twenty years I been in Dutch’s shadow,” he said quietly, “and told all that time that being outlaw’s what I’m meant for.” He searched her expression, like she might toss him a rope to save or hang himself. “Ain’t simple to shed all that.”

“You say it like I wouldn’t stick with you that long to get you free of it,” she challenged. The words struck him, took the breath in ways that the consumption ain’t ever tried, with this idea that it weren’t them being carnal on the run, but that Sadie, the one what’d never looked more than a gunfight to the future since they got friendly, had gone and thought that far to the future with him in mind.

“Shit,” he muttered, lifted his hand off her hip where he’d adjusted it when she shifted, rubbed it over his face and eyes.

Sadie seemed to know she’d hit a mark, sore and needed, in the way that she kept talking. “Arthur... I ain’t no prize either. Married, widowed, and you seen how I ain’t burdened by conscience when someone’s wronged me.” Bitter sadness traced her smile, but regret weren’t part of it. “I don’t aim to be better neither. Life’s taken all I got and dragged it through the mud. All I want’s to take what I can and do what I could with it. Ain’t no fairy tale bullshit that I want.” She let her hand trace the scar on his chin, fingers moved up and under his hand to gently lift it from his face. Staring at him, she took a breath and stepped off some precipice in her heart or mind what she hadn’t readied herself for.

“I ain’t sure if I love you, Arthur Morgan,” she said and weren’t possible to look away from the hurt and the need in her eyes what plied one another. “What I am saying’s that I like you, I want you, and now that I got you? I ain’t aiming to let you go none.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's just ring in the new year with some smut, shall we?
> 
> The year 2021 will be better! The year 2020 turned out shit in a lot of ways, but it got me writing again and helped me find the Red Dead community. Y'all have been a boon in the best ways. Thank you, forever and again, for coming by and reading ASM. For the kudos and the comments and the tweets and the everything.
> 
> Check out my twitter for live tweets when I'm writing or editing at the computer. [This here](https://twitter.com/KichiWhy/status/1345572232374800385?s=20) amounts to my self-commentary from typing up the second chapter of this week's update.
> 
> (Pssssst: It's also the easiest way to get sneakpeeks at the next update.)
> 
> iluall and g'night!
> 
> \- Kichi @[KichiWhy](https://twitter.com/KichiWhy) (Twitter)


	37. Chapter X: Willowstead - 12: Come The Evening After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The comfort found in the evening after gets offset some small degree by the suggestion of where they head to replace Arthur's lost cache of weaponry. Meanwhile, doors continue to open for Dutch van der Linde as the Cartwrights start to play into his designs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

When they slept, tired and sated, it lasted through the full length of the day. The rain kept up a steady rhythmic hum that lulled Sadie back to sleep the few times she stirred, allowed her to linger in the bed, kept warm and dry as she lay up against Arthur. There rested a different air between them, best explained as certain, sated understanding. He hadn’t responded much to her awkward assertion of want and possession, but when he pulled her close against him, she didn’t feel that stilted tension of the other times they’d touched for any reason, right or wrong.

The one time she awoke and found herself sleeping with her head on his shoulder and her arm rested across his chest, a throwback to when she’d awoken after being stitched up in Valentine, she didn’t start nor pull back. All she done were to blink a couple times, feeling the steady rise and fall of his chest under her arm, and then fell back to slumber without that shaded worry over his health, his safety being quite so pressing in her mind.

It were the steady diminishing of the day’s light, accompanied by the slowly growing damp chill that lingered beyond the covers, that finally lured her awake, the warm orange haze of sunset all but faded in the lateness of the hour. Sadie realised she’d shifted some few more times, enough that Arthur must’ve pulled her close against him to stop the fussing. She woke facing him, forehead touched to his chest and brushed every so often by the steady inhale what came with each sleeping breath.

Struck her then, sudden and overwhelming, how different Arthur sounded than those first few fevered days in Van Horn and during their trek west towards south, even than during the long weeks in Valentine. Hitched and hurting still, but the wet stutter to his breath had all but disappeared and the coughing? Hell if she could recall hearing it the past day when she put her mind to counting it. Sadie pressed her face up against his chest and closed her eyes against the burning sting of gratitude that maybe, just maybe, things weren’t so dire as they’d been.

That maybe this served as sign that all she’d done ain’t been without cause, might even have consequence what carried him further from death’s door. A time where she’d rushed in, taken fool action with no plan to sort it out, and yet could turn out more than the scorched earth and broken dreams that too frequently marked her path.

That things could be looking up for the first time in... months?

Felt more like years the way it bore down on them both, making hard the work of living and breathing, and she ain’t full realized how rough that’d been until this moment of hope near struck her stupid. Mind that she kept to silence on it, no desire to jinx it with uttered statement, best held as thoughts canted to the silver lining that’d finally started peeking from back behind dark clouds.

There came a shift against her, a longer breath drawn in what served as sign that Arthur’d started waking as well. His arm, laid over her side and holding her close as they slept, tightened reflexively; it’d surprised her, when he first made it clear he’d meant to sleep with her beside him. There’d been that teasing invite the night before Clemens Point, sure, but the care he’d shown in making sure she lay warm and comfortable before he let himself sleep? Weren’t full a shock, but had a tenderness to it, the hints of some starved need for touch, like he might lose the intimacy if he dared let go. Then, to have slept the day away without tonics or alcohol luring him to slumber? Felt some like he might’ve convinced himself okay to enjoy this and indulge more than he’d let himself in times normal. Sadie herself had a trust in him, a want to allow him to feel that and her own craving to hold to it, now that she had let go into the freefall of her desires.

She felt the brief stilling of his breath as he realised he weren’t alone and all that instinct reversed when he pulled away, looked at her with sleep-heavy eyes. Arthur stalled that withdrawal as recognition, to person and moment, flared up; managed to keep his hand resting on her hip and over the blanket, his thumb idle in brushing atop it.

“Mornin’,” he managed, blearily blinking at her. The body awoke, but the mind lagged behind and looked to her for some explanation, some idea of how things were by the shade of questioning contained in his sleepy smile.

“Evenin’,” she corrected. Sadie faced an uncertain moment herself, that fleeting thought that maybe she ought go to leave him in peace for all that she wanted to stay. One of them new and many precipices what rose up when becoming close to another. They’d rested the day away, the comfort of this bed aside, and she supposed it better to get something eaten over staying idle much longer. He still had pounds upon pounds of flesh and muscle to regain what could not be done without some constant intake of food to offset the illness would forever linger in his lungs.

Arthur lifted his hand off her finally, rubbing it down his face to shed that lethargy of sleep. “Evening?” he echoed, looking across the room to the window, darkened with rain and the retreat of the sun as it slipped away.

“You don’t do well with thinking after sleep,” she chided him. Playful and quick in the teasing, that a comfortable familiarity what required no thought. “Ain’t that dangerous in our line of work?”

He snorted, coming around to aware, and looked back at her. “Don’t need to be awake to shoot a man,” he complained, brushing his fingers through the tangle of her hair and careful in separating the tendrils out to smooth them down. “And I been robbing folk so long I can do it in my sleep.” His gaze moved slow over her face, like he were learning it anew. Maybe he was. She’d not much spent time around any one person at camps to be well seen. Charles, some, because she’d not been a mind to talk and neither had he; it’d made for comfortable silence, though she’d gotten some kicks off watching others try to engage him to no avail. Plenty of times she’d hid her laugh by focusing on the gun she’d be cleaning or whatever task’d been distracting her that day. But no one else, really. And never unguarded, the way they were then. Closest’d been when she killed the pig fucker what got her Jake, but it’d been a state of shock, light-headed, and Arthur left to herself as she’d asked for.

“What all is going on in that head of yours,” he asked, breaking the train of her thought.

Sadie shook her head, dismissing it. “Stuff that don’t matter,” she decided.

“Sure.” He’d that tone what said he didn’t believe it, but didn’t challenge it neither. Instead, he run his thumb along her chin, tilting her head to press a light, remarkably chaste kiss on her lips. Seemed her thought that their situation, new and fragile, brought about some want for contact proved true. Sadie ain’t ever been that much on cuddling or coddling, but seeing him like this? It felt worth it, to have him relaxed a minute after months of him stretched thin and never stopping for the sake of others – always others and never himself. “What’s going on in there that does?” he angled instead, moving his lips up to press a kiss to her forehead, the scratch of his short, scruffy beard itching at her nose before he let his head draw back, fall to the thin pillow.

Sadie looked him over, absently smoothing away the itch triggered from that scruff. She scrunched up her nose, her expression enough to make him choke on a laugh and eye her questioningly. “That we got to do something about this beard of yours,” she decided. “All them law posters I seen show some big burly bear of a man, thick with beard and hair. If you’ve mind to set foot anywhere, we ought to get you cleaned up and civilized looking.”

“I’ll shave it off with my knife later,” he said, waving off the idea.

“I said civilized, not _un_ civilized,” she muttered. “You always go straight to the brute route?”

“No more than you go straight for the shooting,” he countered, mild; him rubbing at his jaw like she’d made him self-conscious.

“Arthur,” she pressed, levelling him a look, even and imploring. “You at least gonna let me buy you something to shave proper with?”

He snorted. “From Pearson? And how’s you thinking to explain needing that?”

Sadie stopped there, caught clear in the unknown she ain’t yet considered in her hasty decision. The main source of supplies in Rhodes’d be through that general store and that meant more exposure to Pearson, who’d no business nor benefit knowing Arthur were alive and this far south. That weren’t even thinking to what he’d said about seeing Dutch and how that could turn things sour if the man’d spoken true and somehow they stumbled onto some shared ground.

“Saint Denis, then,” she figured, brushing aside the idea of some catalogue order for much the same reason of it drawing attention and, the real pertinent part, her having to deal with that Alden fellow what’d given off nothing but discontent the few words she’d exchanged with him. “They got a barber there and easier to get us both things without raising eyebrows none.”

Risk there being that Pearson claimed Dutch headed to Saint Denis, but that ain’t been proven fact yet and she wagered it a risk worth taking. The city had its share of population, dense with folk that they could blend with. Even if Dutch were there, what were the chances of encountering him? The man’d kept to camp mostly, and maybe now he’d be laying low in some alleyway. Out of sight, the way they were playing it. And, well, maybe she might do some looking around if the chance arose, find some way to placate the anxious thought that Dutch were there by proving it wrong.

Arthur’s expression clouded over at the mention of the city, on of his less favoured locations they’d encountered. “Might be worth being an overgrown hermit,” he muttered. So much bad what had occurred there still haunted him, so much of what they’d tried to take stretched just outside the gang’s reach. Hosea and Lenny killed, a half-dozen jobs gone sour, John arrested and shipped off to Sisika. The list went on and goddamn on for him.

“I ain’t real excited by the prospect neither,” she said, straight honest; at least she’d the positive association of seeing Colm hung until his cowardly boots stopped kicking. “But all we got were left at the Hollow and I _ain’t_ going back there to see what’s still there. We done fine so far, but we’ll need you geared up come spring and ain’t no one going to look at us sideways there, spending money buying up them guns you don’t got no more.” The folk there were more like to appreciate the extra monies coming in over questioning the purpose of them, so long as neither of them turned the new guns back on the merchant to rob him clean.

That point had merit enough to sour his expression; Arthur rolled onto his back with an exasperated groan. “Always got to be in Saint fucking Denis,” he let out in his frustration.

“Then I’ll go myself,” she said, mind made up. That reluctance of his hardly riled her; she’d certain places she despised nearing and to fault him on that for Saint Denis’d be cruel in ways she’d no mind to inflict on him. But the idea’d set in her head that they could equip him there and that’s where she’d intent to go now, whether or not he’d come along.

Sadie rolled away from him, over to the edge of the bed and where she could fish up her shirt from the floor. Sitting up, she slipped it on before she stood, standing closer to on her toes to avoid the cool chill in the floor as she moved quick to the fireplace. There, she crouched down, using the cast iron poker to nudge aside ash and blackened wood until she saw the familiar burnt umber of the embers; this she encouraged back to flames by feeding it slivered wood after a day of it being spent untended.

“No.” The word carried resignation through it, firm as his tone came out with reluctance tagged along. “It ain’t smart, running apart. We already seen Strauss and Pearson. I ain’t risking you running across Micah or some bullshit like that when you got no one to watch your back.”

“Afraid I’ll shoot him first?” she asked, adding a quartered log to the fire as it woke up. Her tone near dripped with the sweet sarcasm, and the promise of truth that she sure would. In the gut or the groin, to make sure that bastard suffered long as she could make him.

“That’s a pleasure I want,” he countered, part jest and part temptation from the man that didn’t hold much to vengeance. Weren’t that he forgave to forget, but she supposed too much of his life bore dangers enough without exacting revenge being added to the risks. “Ain’t hunting the bastard down or nothing, but I see him? I’ll kill him all the same.”

Sadie set the poker aside, standing up and stretching her shoulders back now that the dampness of the rain could be chased out by the fire. “How’s about I promise to make him suffer?” she offered, all societal sweetheart with her words and the look she cast him nearer to innocent. “I could do all what you lot threatened on Kieran with them gelding tongs.”

The creak of the mattress came clear and complaining when he shifted to haul his legs over the edge, grabbing at his boots. “Gelding tongs’d be too humane,” he muttered. “Try a dull knife and then we might got something.”

All of them words vengeful fantasies; Sadie’d the mind to indulge in such challenges, but ain’t she heard him say plenty that revenge were something they couldn’t afford? Stark difference from what she planned on doing if Bell ever showed his face again. Would she give Arthur the chance the extract payment for what Micah done to what’d been his family? Maybe. More likely, she’d gut the weasel for what he done. There’d been no compassion left in her cup for a long while now and Sadie weren’t looking to fill it none either.

“Gonna get fresh water,” he’d gone on saying as she toyed with that thought, stood up and shrugging on his jacket, pulling on his hat. “Thinking it might be time to try out that washing tub in the back room.” Arthur ain’t cleaned up from last night, the way she recalled it; had to be some degree of sticky discomfort going on in that union suit of his.

Sadie let out a soft laugh, headed back over to the bed to pick up and don her trousers before the chilled air could sink into her legs the way the floor had put its cool touch into her toes. “Fire’ll be hot enough to boil some water soon,” she intoned, nodding to the kitchen corner. “You first, and I’ll start up some food for us.”

“You ain’t joining me?” he asked and offered, but the sly look he shot her done equal well to shoot down the possibility. Her laugh that time carried much more weight to it, along with the shake of her head.

“There ain’t space for two in that thing,” she told him. Arthur may have lost plenty of weight, but he still beat her in height and breadth. Weren’t no way they’d both fit in there and have water to spare. “We’ll see what kinda hotel we get in Saint Denis. Maybe they got bathing rooms what’ll serve.”

“That ain’t fair,” he called back as he hauled out the door. “Offer like that? Almost makes me _want_ to go to that damn city.”

-

Lucrative turned out to be the perfect description for the thirty-six hours that Dutch reigned over the extravagances promised and delivered by the Cartwright monies. Leads were fleeced, true, and schemes aplenty would arise from the vices and abandoned virtues of Saint Denis’s richest souls, but the true value? The ledgers that Samuel kept. Filled with numbers that ran long in trails of thick black ink upon the legal ledger, the challenge raised to how he might make significant withdrawals without Samuel’s blessing. Josiah Trelawny came to mind, his silken words and sleight of hand perfect for fooling the feeble machinations of a bank’s manager to allow them access to the wealth hidden away.

Then, the coveted red ledger.

Locked away in the drawer, but hardly beyond his reach; Dutch knew how to pick the words and ideas to open the locked mind of his marks, but he had started in his youth knowing equal well the ways to coax open the bolt of the physical lock and leave none the wiser.

Three hours total that he secured with unfettered access to the ledger and my what treasures did the siblings have hidden within. Pages of entries noting the worth to each illicit scheme, thorough accounting of the costs and profits, and then carefully drawn, quizzical maps of a style unfamiliar. Where the riches were hidden, in five separate locations.

Dutch made no effort to learn or copy the details, nor to move on the legal monies as of yet. Patience, faith, and time would see him through this and so he returned everything to normal as though untouched, welcomed Samuel’s return with open arms, and accepted his gracious commission for serving as steward of the house in his place.

Promised and assured that he had earned his rest, it was with a quirked brow that he received a visit less than two days after the conclusion of the storm from the lady Cartwright herself.

“Do come in, my dear,” he invited, warmly gesturing to the tidy, open space of the parlour that connected to his rented accommodations.

Serah Cartwright, looking haggard, but sober, stepped past him, dismissively handing over an envelope with the final portion of proceeds due him after the storm. She threw herself into a chair by the bright fireplace across the room and snapped her fingers.

Entering in her wake limped the wayward Mr. McIntosh, leaning on a cane furnished to him after whatever unfortunate lessons he had been given in that initial show of power the first time Dutch met with the Cartwrights. “Mr. van der Linde,” he gave, subdued and polite in his greeting. An example of a broken soul, no doubt, to keep him in line; rather boorish for all the cultivation he’d come to expect of this family.

Dutch closed the door, envelope disappeared into his pocket for later, and clapped his hands together. Attention drawn front and centre, he smiled broadly, his mood lightened considerably by the progress that fate had deigned allow him. “To what do I owe the honour of both your presence and that of your...” He lingered on McIntosh a moment, a questioning cant to his expression. “Translator?”

The man winced and continued to where Serah sat, standing stiffly beside her chair. He had better grasp of the woman’s gesticulations and moods than most, mayhaps learned from the lessons she gave him against disappointing his benefactors and employers both. This was not the first time he had served such a purpose and would not be the last.

A finger pointed at him, hand twisting to rub her fingers to demonstrate the money-grubber’s favoured idea. “The final accounting of the party,” came the translation. “The Cartwrights thank ye for what ye done.”

“I do appreciate the compensation,” he acknowledged with a nod. There remained no truly magnanimous, philanthropic saint on the cusp of the new century and he but played to the expectation of payment for services rendered. Dutch sat himself opposite the lady. “A drink?” he offered with a gesture to the tumbler of scotch and two glasses laid out on the sitting room table. When she nodded, he poured her a glass, two-fingers deep, and then one for himself.

Serah drained the glass in one gulp and set it down with a thud, leaning back with her legs crossed. She wore the dark leathers with the same white leather jacket he’d seen on their first meeting, apparently her preferred simplicity over the dress she had been trussed up in by her brother. Her eyes were shadowed more than before, likely the piper’s penance for her indulgence of opium and alcohol.

“I cannot help but wonder what else drew you here, Miss Cartwright,” he commented conversationally. There ever came the risk of discovery during a scheme such as Dutch had been laying out and it served him better to be aware of it, to test the very air for it. Pleasant all the while as he approached his scotch with less haste and more respect to its taste. “Surely you are too integral to the family business to be an errand girl.”

The jibe struck home and she stiffened, pointed angrily to her escort, then pulled a small, thinly bound notebook, no more than a few pages. This she tossed his way and Dutch caught it with one hand, looked over the plain cover of it.

“Mr. Cartwright has come across an opportunity,” McIntosh intoned, “suited to yer skillset.”

“That being?” Dutch unfolded the booklet, a series of dates, numbers, and locations listed in neat print. Stage schedules? No. Trains, maybe. There were small cross-marks niched against certain entries, indicating a transfer or exchange.

Serah snapped her fingers, pointed to the book. McIntosh winced at the impatient glare she shot him.

“Charisma, ye see,” he said quickly, body instinctively angled to diminish his profile from her proximity. How cruel she must have been to have him so well contained. “The book lists transfers from Sisika, the lot of them headed for hanging. Miss Cartwright will be waylaying them each and Mr. Cartwright’s saying ye ought be there to convince each of them to... join the enterprise.”

Ah, recruitment.

Serah looked over at Dutch then, tapping her chest over where the heart would be if she possessed one in working order. “Ye had a loyal bunch,” McIntosh continued. “They’re thinking ye might profit by helping them get their own loyal sorts.”

This cooled his outlook a degree, the recent developments having raised the question of true loyalty, when family bonds wrought by fire and a passion against law’s constraints proved to not be the immovable bond he had cultivated it to be. “Be wise, Miss Cartwright. Those beholden to me were not mere fancies built on chance encounter. I selected each, as your brother has selected here, but I cannot vouch for the veracity of these folks’ loyalty once they are... tamed.” Dutch had sought the raw clay, ready to sculpt in each that he drew into the fold of the gang. This list was nothing more than numbers and convicts, no details of what weaknesses would bend their ears and convert their wills to what Samuel wanted.

This warning seemed to please Serah, a validation of an argument she had put forward perhaps. She leaned back, arms rested on the back of the chair, and smirked at him.

“What is the vision I am to aspire them towards?” he asked, head canted to the side. A query, a small bit of bait to see what she might nibble at, what she might disclose through her speaker.

Serah gestured towards him and McIntosh elaborated: “Freedom, Mr. van der Linde. Miss Cartwright understands that ye aspire to that?”

Dutch inclined his head, giving her the point to that. “Indeed, but it seems to me that I must give up some measure of my own to achieve this for them?”

This had her shrug, unconcerned by what trivial concerns he had. “They offer compensation,” came the tired words from McIntosh. “One-fifty per head, plus five percent of any profits their subsequent employment bring to the family.”

“How generous.” Dutch crossed his legs, fingers steepled, leaned back in the chair as he considered the offer. This would give him greater rein to travel in Lemoyne without raising his profile in the eyes of the Cartwrights, and mayhaps he could benefit if there were souls that better suited his end goals over theirs. This could serve him, but he could not relent too easily lest it raise suspicions in that complicity. “Fifteen percent,” his counter to their offer.

They settled on eight percent and Dutch smiled as he let them out. “Very well. Let us bring new dreamers into the fold.”


	38. Chapter X: Willowstead - 13: An Unwelcome City

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The streets of Saint Denis mean two very different things for Arthur and Sadie, but the city has what they need and so they have come to visit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

God. Damn. Saint. Fucking. Denis.

Arthur felt exposed, riding in alongside Sadie late in the evening and some days after the storm had passed. The sun had long set and shadows what had stretched under its descent now shrouded everything they passed. They equal shrouded them, a benefit to offset the uncertain costs of riding into a populous area with the kind of bounty he’d carried for years, his visage not full different until they completed their business here. “You sure about this?” he asked, looking her way to offer one final chance to relent on this course.

“Stop complaining,” she shot back, taking with it the idea they might shed this route as a fool plan.

“Ain’t a complaint if it’s makin’ sure you’re still set on it,” he grumbled. It’d been some days since they’d formalized their sleeping arrangements (she, in bed, with he), sure, but weren’t no key to full understanding one another. Felt better, closer to right, even with the complexities of it unsorted, and that served him fine for all it ain’t peeled back the layer of knowing what all went on in that head of hers.

The way they were set up, they had time to figure out the rest. While they ain’t done much intimate since the night that storm set in, there weren’t no expectation there either. The whole point’d come down to neither of them full knowing what it was they were meant to do and feel here. Least, for the first time in what’d be years, he ain’t got the law nor trouble breathing down his neck and could pace his thinking on it, let it sort out without forcing nothing to conclusions.

“We’re doing this, Arthur,” she reiterated, refusing to look at him and risk debating the point further. “You come along or go back, but I ain’t leaving until things’re done.”

“I already said I ain’t gonna let you do this alone,” he grumbled, looking away. Kept his eye on them things around them, like trouble might crawl up out of the cobblestone that the dirt road’d shifted into some ways back. The way Saint Denis worked, it’d be right natural for things to slide sideways without no warning and he meant to keep his guard up against that.

“Then stop complaining,” came again, her patience only steady when it come to making sure that they kept the course once set on it.

Part of them complexities left to sort out weren’t so much on why he’d come, when he let the reality of his decision sink in. This city what’d made him feel like the life he’d known were a relic doomed to ruin weren’t no idea of a good time. But leaving Sadie to face it without him there, watching her back, felt the more sour taste to his tongue. Hell, what if the law here chanced to recall her as the lady spitfire that shot up them O’Driscoll bays at Colm’s hanging and took her to task on it? He’d figured and known his need to come with here weren’t about trusting her to get what they needed and get out. Tried to justify it that way, but it rang real hollow. No, he needed to be here with her to make sure nothing went wrong what he could stop, even if the full why’s and what’s of this new thing between them sometimes made his head hurt to think on. They was stronger together, a truth even Dutch’d known and kept when the madness claimed him.

They continued riding slow and careful through the city, his thoughts pulling back to the complicated nature of _them_ and the circles his mind ran with it. Sadie stood as frighteningly competent, lethal, beautiful, all that; yet, she were legally bound to a man what’d been dead less than a year. Her own woman, free and right to make her own choices, and weren’t property to be held onto nor told what to do, nor how long to grieve. She was a goddamn force of nature’s fury to any what tried to tell her how to heal or live after Jake’d been killed. Maybe that lent to the complexity, this fact that she’d been ruined by love. He’d watched and weighed what its loss’d done to her and the thought that he could be part of what’d make her vulnerable to that again? That rightly gave him pause.

He sighed, irritated that this was where his thoughts went when he needed them to be on the city around them, the risks what enveloped them the deeper they forded into the wasteful river of sin that wound around stone edifices, wood mansions, and iron machines. They carried between them the last of the recompense taken from the Cartwrights, blended with what’d been tucked into Buell’s saddlebags and what Sadie’d squirreled away from working in Valentine. That made them flush with cash and what saved them from being ripe targets came more that they didn’t look the part of money. Riding in late, wearing gear worn down by toil and trial; they’d done everything to lessen their profile, but all it needed was one fool to mark ‘em and force a problem what needed solving.

“It ain’t that far,” she commented, sat straight in her saddle, alert eyes kept on their surroundings. Must’ve taken his sigh for impatience, though her words proved true. They came up on the stables not long after and paid fees sufficient to cover off their mares three days, then trekked on foot over to one of the nicer hotels in the area. Rented themselves a room, signed up as Callahan and Caroline Adler – the names made sense, the more they talked on it after that brief exchange over what she wrote to Charles. Saddlebags served as their only luggage, hauled easy up the stairs, and they passed on the offer of food that night. Both of them’d had their fill of salted beef and hard biscuits on the way in and Arthur? Riding in from Willowstead pushed his limits; further than he’d managed in a day before, but still far cry from the endurance he wanted to possess the longer he rested, recuperated, and struggled to make progress on this damn lingering illness.

The door unlocked and pushed open left Arthur feeling about as suited to the finer of the room as he done about the city. Inside? A bed with space for the both of them awaited, fresh and new enough to not have moth-eaten edges, and bathing fixtures what ran hot water without boiling it themselves tucked away in a small room at the rear corner. Right fancy and uncomfortable in the very nature of its comforts.

He pulled off his duster to lay it on the trunk at the foot of the bed, then went to sit on the mattress itself. Soft. Plush. All them things he ain’t much earned and felt strange to indulge in, but the way Sadie sat down next to him after she done a quiet sweep of the room, easy and relaxed, offset that some. Helped him feel, at least, like he ain’t alone in this finery.

“How’re you feeling?” she asked, pulling off her hat and dropping it on his duster. Briefly, she put her hand against the back of his neck, testing the tension knotted there, fingers working careful at the muscles all too briefly before she pulled them away. Ain’t much to contact with Sadie, so much as he’d learned, unless they were in bed and not just sat upon it. Then she seemed fine with his touch and her own on him, intimate or casual; kept what they had for them alone, like it weren’t nothing she wanted advertised to no one around. Weren’t shame what done it either, he figured, just one more of them layers she used to protect herself from the hurts that the world pressed down on them. One less way to seem vulnerable.

“I’m fine,” he gave, his standard reply. Arthur ain’t been able to drop that guarded response and he had to remind himself that she deserved more for all she done, for all they had. “Just tired is all,” he added with a reluctant sigh. Long ride and the rough city left his head pounding and his lungs raw, but ain’t burning so much no more and the cough weren’t so bad neither.

He leaned forward to pull off his boots, then dropped his hat to rest atop them, followed by his gunbelt. That kept it in reach, ready to draw at the slightest wrong sound. Thought a moment to stripping down to his union suit for the night, fought his mind to taking that intention, but now that they weren’t riding no more, that they’d made their first destination, he’d started to let the weight of the trek bear down on him and the idea of stripping off more felt near impossible. Goddamn tried hard to acknowledge that it ain’t weak to be tired, to have his eyelids feeling like they were weighed down and leaden, but he done his best to allow it – that served as part of his small favour to stop resisting the recuperation, like it might help more if he just damn well accepted that he needed it more than when she yelled at him for it.

“Then you ought get to sleep,” she said, firm. Not like he were of a mind not to, but warranted from when he’d been stubborn to it. Sadie got up from the bed, went through the room once more and checked the sightlines from the windows; proved she ain’t so comfortable with being there as she’d made herself to be, but her posture relaxed some as no harm manifested in her sweep.

Arthur stretched back his shoulders, rolling them to chase away the knotted tension from the ride, and nodded, pushed himself back on the bed to lay flat. Seemed a shame to put the dirt of their ride on the plush surface, but he ain’t had it in him to care that much. Few minutes later, when Sadie crawled atop the blanket next to him, she done so in most of her clothes, stripped down about the same as he done. Less worn down, but tired still and he smiled some, folding his arms up and behind his head as the sleep come to claim him.

They could worry about the damn city in the morning.

-

Morning came quicker than she’d preference to, ready to sleep longer if it meant staying warm next to Arthur. That temptation worked its claws through her and threatened to drag her back to slumber in the mostly clean, comfortable, _real_ bed. All these things what gave her inclinations to linger and enjoy it, but being that they ain’t come to Saint Denis to sleep the whole time, she managed to unhook them temptations and leave them tucked in safely next to Arthur, who’d hardly moved throughout the night, token truth to how the ride’d taken strength from him.

Sadie ignored the sleep-wrinkled look of her clothes and hauled herself off the bed, pulling on her boots, belts, jacket, and hat in as quick and quiet a manner she could to keep from waking him. Headed out the door before him meant the opportunity to look around for where they ought go to stock up, and scout about to make sure there weren’t no dark-haired Dutch hidden around the corners the way Pearson’d made it out to be.

Underlying all that, though, she’d something of a separate purpose to be heading out alone.

The city ran quiet for the early morning and the trolley she boarded weren’t full up with folk going about their rounds. Citizens took one look at her weaponry, her road-dirtied clothes, and the daring look she shot each of them, then found real good reasons to look all them other directions that she didn’t exist in. She enjoyed the solitude of it, able to rustle up some of that protective grit what’d smoothed out the longer she and Arthur kept away from prying eyes. She countered and complained and argued with him plenty, but that all fell to different outcomes, the sort she wanted to preserve some for all she’d the skill to burn every damn bridge she ever come across. Out here, in civilization, she’d no care to foster friendships or kind gestures, but instead be left to her devices much as she left others to theirs.

Few people’d been on the trolley, but fewer still were lingering around the gallows courtyard when she hopped off the line and made her way through the gate.

Sadie stepped into the open area, looking up to where Colm’d finally been hanged until his bastard body were full dead, forced to serve consequence for all the murders, robberies, and countless sins committed over his lifetime of outlawing. Weren’t no noose hanging from the beams today, no lawman standing guard, and no prisoner stood there to take their last look at the unkind world, but in her mind’s eye she saw all them that’d been there that day. That moment played as clear in her mind’s eye now as it done in her dreams, vivid in holding to the exact second when the vile man’d realized there weren’t no escaping the noose for him that time. The helpless fear, absolute in its consumption of his mind, as the hangman pulled the lever, the trap door swung open, and the bastard finally paid for all what he’d done, orchestrated, and forced others to suffer through. It were a moment long gone, but one she wanted to relive anew, craved to see time and again until, maybe, she might feel sated. Satisfied that Colm O’Driscoll done finally served enough punishment for the pains he’d doled out. But all she’d ever have were that memory, tied in with that cold, hollow satisfaction of killing them son of a bitch O’Driscolls that’d been there, expecting to bust him out and unhappy to countered by one vengeful widow and two rival outlaws.

Problem were, though, that them O’Driscoll boys were all but gone now and most of them by her hand. All that vengeance and retribution she’d sworn on had been dealt, all that driving force gone. She’d figured that, maybe, once Jake were avenged, she might be able to die herself. Faced with that success, though, all her pangs of loneliness weren’t so strong as they’d been. Once all her hate had run dry, she’d expected to feel empty. Came here to see if maybe there were anything left she ain’t done. But it were the desire to relive the memory of the hanging that made her understand it to be done. There weren’t nothing left to it but the recollecting. The O’Driscolls were done and Jake’d be able to rest in peace now, mind that she’d no expectation her own final rest’d be anything of the sort. Felt, in that moment, like she’d finally made right some part of that loss, the terror, the everything that’d them bastards’d brought down on her.

Only, she didn’t feel done with the world.

Sadie’d expected to be finished, to wrap up the Adler line as it went, but now... She’d vested herself with Arthur, in helping his goals. Set herself to seeing him survive and finding along the path she dragged him down that it weren’t just loss that she couldn’t bear no more. It were the idea of losing them that mattered. Them that she cared for, with Arthur being the one foremost there.

Parts of her worried, anxious, at what to be done come spring. Seemed Arthur were agreed to recover over the winter and they’d well dally through it, but come spring? She supposed that might end. He’d go one way, she another. Hell, she’d told him not to assign no real meaning to their intimacy in so many words. Most of that, well, it came with a complicated cant. She felt some days like she could blame herself on it, by telling her ideas that wanted to keep Arthur close that it’d betray her Jake, but ain’t no ring of truth that came with it. All it done were let her try to lessen the want of keeping, replace it with the need of having. That made it easier when she played like there weren’t no expectation beyond satiation. With so much of life taken to defying plans, then maybe she could just take the guilty pleasure of not knowing or caring where it went.

Or maybe she were scared of losing that.

Of not being part of what he wanted once his lungs were strong again.

Sadie shook her head, dug out a cigarette to soothe her nerves. She stood and watched the barren wooden platform, the memories and meaning to it about all she had for a grave or memorial to Jake and what she’d done to make amends. To right her life and avenge his death. Smoking her way through the cigarette, she said a few words to the memory of her Jake, told him that she done corrected what’d taken him from her. Talked some about how she missed him. Spoke up front about Arthur and the way she’d grown attached and attracted to him. Even told the memory of Jake to come haunt her if he done had issues with it, but her Jake’d been too good to fault her and she knew no ghost would come for them.

The cigarette burned out between her fingers and she dropped it to the ground, brushing off the hot ash from her hand. Figured that at least she’d made sense of one thing in coming here and that was being what she’d done to avenge her life had served its purpose. Allowed her the chance to say goodbye to her Jake one more time. And maybe gave her the idea to tell that bastard Colm that he better be ready, because after all she done to see him hanged? Weren’t no way she were headed heavenward once she died. No. She’d come down there and have eternity to make him realize exactly how far he’d done wronged the world by lighting the fire of her anger.

Left the courtyard not long after that and took up the next trolly, rode it down to the central station where she posted the letter to Charles. Weren’t any correspondence to her name what waited or that Tacitus Kilgore fellow, which soothed the worry some that Dutch could be hiding around, using the alias as a front while he did whatever it was he thought himself rightful in doing. Weren’t much he deserved to do no more, in her mind, but they were all better served by having no proof of his being there. Too soon, it’d be, if their paths crossed and she weren’t of the mind to put Arthur through the challenge of it when he fought still the physical pain of his lungs, ain’t needed no emotional mess hurting him too.

Done with them two things she’d needed the time and privacy to do, she headed back to the hotel and done her best not to linger too long on the spring dilemma.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming out of a long burnout stretch that started back in December, tied-in with all those stresses that real life brought on amidst my trying to keep on with the updates. The week (plus) break from work at the end of the month and the return to structured work/life schedule has been a boon. I find myself more than just excited to work on ASM. The sensation is this satisfaction that my edits this week have more energy to them and I'm able to drill-down further into the mental/emotional mindsets of Sadie and Arthur to explore.
> 
> Long story short: I've always loved and have been driven to keep ASM updated, but I'm feeling much better about how I approach that now that 2021 is here.
> 
> No smut this week, but check out Transgressions! There's a [new update there](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27625381/chapters/70320348), a set of scenes I cut from ASM but wanted to retain because I love writing hurt/comfort and sick/comfort between strong characters with strong opinions. Plus, Sadie being sick and insisting on stealing Arthur's shirts to serve as nightclothes just tickled me because the woman really cannot be stopped once she sets her mind on something.
> 
> Also, there's a reference in the first chapter of this week's update to how Sadie woke up in Valentine after being stitched up. You can read the details of that in the [first Trangressions piece](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27625381/chapters/67589134).
> 
> Here's my question for y'all this week: What length of hair and facial hair do you keep your Arthur at in-game? I run with 1-2 on the facial hair (gimme some scruff, yo) and about 2-3 on the hair length, but often trimming it short and high on the sides. He looks so handsome and cleaned up that way! It'll be about how he looks in ASM if Sadie ever gets him to a barber.
> 
> If.
> 
> iluall and g'night!
> 
> \- Kichi @[KichiWhy](https://twitter.com/KichiWhy) (Twitter)


	39. Chapter X: Willowstead - 14: Chance Encounters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Saint Denis ought be called Fortune's Demise; the foul luck of the city catches up with Sadie Adler, forcing one more unwanted reunion upon her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.
> 
> (shhh, totally still Sunday, it's not 12:01am as I type this)

Saint Denis kept to its best behaviour that first day, offering them a spread of fine weather and unassuming folks that made light and easy the task of ordering up gear and supplies. That pressure of being seen and known weren’t there; the idea that they’d been exposed somehow by who’d they’d encountered stopped bearing the same weight on her shoulders. Never stopped them from keeping safe, an eye kept to the shadows and their trail, all the while they played up the Adler façade for all it was worth; the mister ordered himself couple new rifles for his collection and the missus bought up some finer tools, including a handsome new shaving set what’d travel well back to the ‘stead with them.

The irony of how damn domesticated it felt weren’t lost on Sadie, nor how easy it came to fall back on their being more than two individuals on the run, lovers instead bound and wed. That struck her most when they took lunch on some shaded patio and started talking about how ranching’d worked, of all damn things. Turned out Arthur’d spent time working farms and ranches; ain’t much surprise, with how he took to horses, that he might’ve done that now and again. Yet the fool thought he weren’t good for nothing legal and she’d bit her tongue to keep off the point, wanting to hear him talk fondly of horses the way he done, a moment that let them both escape the reality what hounded them.

The second day turned out to be the real bastard, making up for all the calming ease of the first with the ill fortune that it crashed down upon them. They made mid-afternoon before their luck soured, near on the end of their day and almost free from it. Three hours, maybe four, without trouble and it’d’ve been fine. They’d’ve been secured back at the hotel, ready to rest a day or two before their orders came delivered, then back to Willowstead to pass the winter in peace.

Fate, turned out, weren’t so keen on that coming to fruition.

Sadie’d found herself a saloon with its entry tucked in a cool, shaded alleyway to pass her time; Arthur’d join her once he was done with the barber, sat there to trim down his hair and distance his looks from the mug of Arthur Morgan seen on the bounty posters down by the police station. The day had heat enough to warrant the extra dime she spent to enjoy a beer kept iced and she’d ordered up a second with the same treat to it, feeling something akin to relaxed.

It was about then that she fell to the fatal flaw; a day-and-a-half without issue lowered her guard, kept it down from watching full her surroundings. She’d been chatting idle with the bartender about Lemoyne weather, gaining herself some better sense of how it’d run the rest of the winter, when it happened.

“My, oh, my but my eyes do deceive me!”

The words played out as no more than a pleasant joy, but the voice had Sadie freeze with her fingers clenched tight about the base of the beer bottle. She swallowed, breath suddenly caught thick in her throat, and felt all her fallen guard slam back into place as gooseflesh blossomed along her arms, under the cover of her sleeves. The contest between flight and fight rose quick in her mind, but equal quick did she clamp down on it. Needed to know more before she’d let it play out, like as not’d be fight over flight no matter the case, but had to know more. Owed Arthur to know more. She steadied her hand and breath, peeled her fingers off the bottle, and looked to the figure what’d walked through the door.

“Dutch,” she greeted with only a thin, hesitant smile. She’d earned ire by breaking John out of Sisika early, over towards the end, but not near what Arthur faced for it. All else between her and Dutch van der Linde’d been peripheral, mind hardly for her lack of trying to get on more work, drop in more leads, show them all that she had that mettle what’d serve the whole. Turned out better, that being held ever at the fringes, when that house of cards scattered, but left her unknowing here of what to expect when caught in the open with him alone.

“Mrs. Adler.”

Dutch sounded warm and pleased to see her, played the part with his expression matched and in the way he stepped up, arms raised to either side in cue to take in the sight of her, to note the changes since last they chanced to meet. Or last they’d chanced to part, the way it’d truly run.

“What a coincidence, and unexpected at that,” he lauded with a chuckle, a tense winner’s smile donned with the ease and confidence of a finely tailored suit. He took a moment to speak, tones hushed, with his companion – a woman Sadie recalled all too clearly from riding past her in Rhodes, a fact she squandered into silence while cursing her luck that, goddamn it, but of _course_ Dutch’d have his fingers in that goddamn pie. Must’ve been that same woman what Pearson’d seen in attendance with him, making murky the ground between her and the gang’s proud leader, with what connections he’d managed to foster in two months. “Go on ahead, my lady,” he said, indicating the woman make herself settled somewhere away from them. “I will be but a moment, to catch up with an old friend.”

The woman studied her, disinterest wrought in her expression and disdain darkening her eyes. That she lingered a moment long in her glance had Sadie look for recognition hid there, but weren’t no shine of that mirrored back to her. Would’ve been sour to be mistaken as a witness to what’d been done in Rhodes, even to be able to place this woman as there the day them corpses hung in warning, but the risk passed with a dismissive shrug, the woman walking past without comment.

“Bartender!” Bright, borderline jovial with his words and airs, Dutch clapped his hand down on the bartop with a sharp slap, “another drink for my dear friend.” This as he looked her way and she’d the sensation of being prey in the predator’s sights, curiously seen but not yet marked for dinner. He stepped up to the bar, next to her to be close and in her space, but not quite touching. “And one for myself,” he added, laying down a dollar with that fluidly charismatic energy she remembered vaunted and lauded around the campfire by those what Dutch had saved from misfortunes in times before.

Sadie picked up her near-finished bottle, drained the dregs of it to keep from her instinct to speak sharply, to keep from striking out with harsh words sifted from the ruins this man had left of John and Arthur, had near left of Abigail by his inaction. There were times, darker moments of suspicion, when she’d even wondered whether Dutch would’ve gone for Jack if the boy hadn’t been all but innocent, a child caught in the outlaw game.

“What’re you doin’ here, Dutch?” she asked, looking him over for some clue. Sought an idea more than what Pearson’s panicked story had been, seeing him but not knowing his purpose. Gauntness gripped his features more than it’d been towards the end, but too easy to see that the lives of folk lost ain’t taken its toll on him the way it ought’ve, ain’t marked him with years added or sins tallied. With what’d been chaos and ruin left in his wake, he sported an unearned air of free relaxation that had her forcing her hand off the empty bottle ‘fore she thought to wield it as weapon. Indignation – how _dare_ he look so damn unaffected – struggled to surface and she swallowed it, forced it far down. Wanted to confront it, here and now, fought every instinct that told her to call him out for what he’d done and failed to do.

But, she had Arthur and that had her stalling that vengeful lashing. Weren’t right nor safe to cut Dutch here and risk hurting Arthur by it, risk uncovering his survival before he’d full mended, full come to terms on how his life ain’t possible the way it’d been before. Arthur’d been through the worst that life threw at him, barely come out alive, and she’d do everything she needed to keep him protected from what’d set him back and put to the test what little health and mind he’d regained.

A fatherly sort of chuckle distracted her resolve, making her question what he meant here and how he’d decided to take her leaving the gang. How damn thin was the ice underneath the words being put forth? “I could ask the same of you,” he replied, the words gentle but the tone probing. His eyes were sharp on her and Sadie met them, stood even and firm without flinching. Two fresh bottles were set down, uncapped and cold; he raised one to her as she picked the other up, cautious to the toast. Dutch took a drink and watched her, something familiar coming back to his expression in the way he seemed to be calculating the odds, his visage expectant that she provide an answer that suited his taste.

“Passing through,” she said, went for casual for all that it rang tense. Her mouth felt dry and she drained half the bottle to sate it. “Ain’t much to it.”

“Far be it for me to suggest otherwise,” he returned, all assured confidence. She caught herself trying to gauge what he was up to, angling for, and felt too stark how ill-equipped she were for this. Sadie ran hard and honest; ain’t no point playing sly in her mind and that left her disadvantaged against a truly practiced conman. “Though.” His thoughtful pause had her hold still, tense. “I had wondered what became of you since last we spoke.” Ruminated more than asked, but his silence baited for words, something means to either justify or hang herself with contradictions. Ain’t that they were enemies, not when they last split, but Sadie’d learned too much, heard too much, to think of Dutch without that raw anger and suspicion about what he was planning after all he’d brought down around him.

“Surviving,” she provided, keeping her words short, to the point. She tipped the neck of her bottle towards him. “Same as you, I’d wager.”

“Thriving, Mrs. Adler,” he clarified without a broken step, some inward amusement condescending upon her. “Surviving is a heartbreakingly short-term goal and I have always looked to the horizon for opportunities. Which I have found.”

All that meant to her were that he’d looked away from what good he’d had right in front of him and left it to rot like the dying body of his own favoured son; her grip tightened on the bottle with anger. Sadie figured he’d be expecting her to ask after these opportunities, expected he’d then chide and tell her to have faith or some such, but instead she found her temper flaring hotly. Not two months since his goddamn gang family fractured to pieces and he dared to look ahead. After all that happened, all he did _not_ do to save them two he’d called sons, and he were so damn entitled to laud himself for some higher purpose? Her eyes narrowed, jaw grit suddenly tense. “Shame there ain’t anyone to share the wealth with,” she said, looking beyond him to the lack of dogs begging for the scraps of his attention the way she’d seen Micah and Bill do.

Dutch’s smile crystallized, grew cold in its calculation, and she had the sudden reflection that her words’d stepped her right where he’d wanted her. “You have made quite the presumption,” he cautioned, “to think I am _without_.”

This grated her; knew it wiser to keep silent, but wisdom ain’t run near strong as hot as her temper. Not now, not ever. All she could see right then were the cold, broken down body she’d found on the ridge. Arthur near as dead and abandoned, breath beaten back into him until her fists were sore. John arrested and left to rot in Sisika, then shot and left to die railside when it weren’t convenient no more to have that son, rebellious as they were both _insisting_ on being. Abigail left in Milton’s hands and no charge led to save her. All these failures and losses, piled up like corpses on the roadside. “Who’s left, Dutch?” she challenged, bottle thudded down on the bartop, loud. “Micah?” A pointed look for the bastard rat what came up blissfully empty. “I don’t see him cowering behind you no more.”

Clouds briefly darkened his expression, mind that Dutch recovered without breaking his façade the way she’d thrown hers to shatter on the floor. “Mr. Bell and I have our understanding,” his well-sculpted reply, threat and warning woven snug between each word – that she would be wise to have a similar sort of understanding with him. “As I have with each of those that kept their _faith_ and stayed _with_ me, Mrs. Adler.” Here he paused, looked her over as though finding her wanting of that very loyalty he demanded. “You would know this, if you had been one.”

The dangerous threat underlying it, that she were the disloyal one, stoked her anger hotter. “Arthur always stood _with_ you,” she said, fervently hoping right then that the man did not walk in and complicate the matter. “You have that understanding with him too? ‘Cause I ain’t seen him here neither.”

This tripped him, the careful cant of his expression gone to stone a moment before he fractured it, chipped away the coarse edges to find again that mask of superiority. “I have not seen Arthur since Pinkertons raided the camp,” he said as though this were the gospel truth, but each carefully selected word fell as the lies they were. “He and John have-“ a pause, a gesture into the ether, “-disappeared.”

Sadie’d never struggled so hard against her temptations as she done then, smothered the want to yell him raw, strip off that smug confidence, all too easy to take the venom of Micah’s role and the failure of Dutch’s lauded ideals and focus it into this moment. Took near all her resolve, fingers on the bottle pressed to white, before she kept her tongue and fists under control. With effort, all of it, but she raised her head high and looked him in the eye.

“Shame,” she said, worked hard to keep her tone from betraying her want to _remedy_ what this man’d done and not done for Arthur right then and there. Instead, she tore a page from his book and uttered the same style of lies, gaze unwavering. “Ain’t seen hide nor hair of neither of ‘em.”

The darkness in his eyes said clear his distrust of her behaviour in that moment. Sadie’d reacted and, in that stumble of her temper, shown some glimpse of the cards in her hand; she knew something, but she’d fight her instincts to keep that hidden, no matter how he’d now suspect it. “Of course you not,” he murmured, soothing. Double-meaning, mayhaps, calling out her lie and tying it to his disbelief without casting clear accusation on it.

She pushed the half-emptied bottle away, stepped away from the bar and this dangerous conversation. “If it’s all the same,” she said, nodding to the table where his companion’d gone to, “I’ll let you continue on your business.”

Dutch watched her, an expression of consideration. Then he shattered the glass surface with his conman’s grin, holding out his hand as though to a valued friend. “And you to yours,” he echoed, not wasting more time with crafted words at this juncture. “I wish you the safest journey.”

Sadie’d no desire to shake his hand, but she allowed it to smooth the moment and outlay sooner that avenue to leave the bar and this moment, this goddamn validation of Pearson’s warning, in the dust. She weren’t ready as much when he gripped her hand hard, pulled her close for a private word.

“We have each chosen our paths, Mrs. Adler,” he said quietly, words carved out with a dangerous tone. “In deference to the circumstances that brought you under my protection, I will not hold you to the same expectations of faith as I did the others, but as you are now back on your proverbial feet...” The pause as he looked over her again, seeing perhaps that she’d not escaped the gang with nothing; walked armed, clothed, and clearly fed and monied enough for cold beer during an afternoon repose. “Given that, I’ve no moral obligation beyond this day. I think it best if our paths were to never cross again.”

Left no opportunity to respond and with the disgusted stain his words set upon her, she’d no desire neither. Sadie pulled her hand free and let him move past before she left the saloon with firm steps and no look back. Freed from that den, she waited a quarter hour in the opposite alley, leaned into the shade to ensure no eyes nor feet followed her out before she decided it safe to leave, find Arthur, and get the hell out.

Yet, for all she knew her path unfollowed, she’d the haunting sensation that it weren’t about to remain that way.

-

When Dutch joined Serah at their table, she shot a pointed look towards the door swinging closed in the wake of Mrs. Adler’s swift departure. Questioning, he assumed, whether he’d quite finished that discussion and the tense exchanges it had made manifest.

“A former associate,” he soothed with a shake of his head. “Passing through. Pay her no heed.”

Serah frowned, then pointed to herself and then towards the doors once again, some detail of relevance missed in his interpretation.

Here he allowed a sigh, something to foster frustration and elaboration where her lack of words failed her. “I am afraid, my dear, that I do not fully understand the nuances of your particular communication,” he reminded her, words laden with false apology.

The frown turned to a scowl and she dug into the inner pocket of her jacket, a thin notebook and short pencil retrieved. This she opened irritably and scratched out a message she then thrust out for him to read.

‘Saw her at Rhodes job.’

Dutch reread the statement, carefully schooled his expression, calculating the impact and implication of this new information. Some week and more now since that had happened, for a town no more than a day’s ride from Saint Denis; the widowed woman should have been long gone if her presence had been the dalliance she insisted. “You disbelieve that she is but passing through.”

Serah nodded, turned the journal back to herself and scratched more words into it.

‘McIntosh tried to cancel job when saw her.’

Her expression spoke volumes to how unimpressed she’d been at that suggestion. There could be no failure nor retreat once she had committed to a task and their shared acquaintance, McIntosh, would have suffered for the attempt otherwise.

Dutch made the connection, had already laid the lines down when Serah’s familiarity with Sadie Adler surfaced in her irritation. “It seems that Mr. McIntosh knows something of her that he has not divulged,” he commented.

To this she nodded, foot tapping with impatience on the floor.

“And so we shall question him,” he consoled. “But, later. We have business to attend to first.”

And then, mayhaps, he could discover more to which of Sadie Adler’s words had been truthful and which had been coated in lies. Then, depending on the discoveries, he might need to negotiate a new understanding with the unpredictable spitfire of a woman.


	40. Chapter X: Willowstead - 15: Broken Loyalty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Encountering Dutch'd been one foul trouble to deal with, and now Sadie had to find some way to get Arthur out without crossing his path. And Arthur? Well, it ain't easy, hearing what he's about to hear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

Arthur ain’t put much store to having any sort of refined nor regal appearance for some years now; mostly, he’d run to the ragged route of easy care what served the hit-and-miss lifestyle that _un_ lawabiding folk like him enjoyed. Then, when Blackwater failed and Pinkertons flooded after them at every turn, it’d been less and less the priority to keep up grooming over surviving, keeping everyone safe and fed more critical than laying flat his hair with pomade. After Guarma and as his disease progressed with the same rampant pace as Dutch’s desperate designs, it’d been all he could do to keep halfway clean. Hell, even that came more from the firmly threatening guidance of Susan Grimshaw than any will to bathe he’d left in him.

Felt odd, then, to have all that hair and the last vestiges of the scruffy beard gone. Felt light and unfamiliar, which he supposed were the goal in doing it; a clean-shaven jaw and close-cropped hair ran the risk of making him almost respectable looking, which none of his bounty posters ever done suggested of him.

That didn’t make the ugly mug of his found in the mirror all that more appealing, though; still old and worn down, the kind of face what made him question Sadie’s taste more than once while they was laying together, sated and sleepy, and maybe that’d be why he made sure she got more out of their intimacies, few as they’d been, whenever he could. Some way to make up for fate having her fall for his beaten down appearance, more like a nag what ought be put out to pasture than a person what deserved any affection.

Arthur done and tried to inspect his reflection without that harsh outlook, but it’d been ingrained in him too long, too much a part of him to let full go. Easier, here, when he looked the part of a stranger, sure; mind that he had the same scars and his eyes still carried the shadowed bruising what lingered from consumption, but the redness’d started to fade. Better than before, but he’d the feeling like that’d be with him the rest of his life, long or short.

When he caught the far more pleasing reflection of Sadie in that mirror, her stepped into the shop sudden from the street, his reflecting on his own ceased, replaced by wary concern. Her face were pale, strained, and she shot a quick second look out the street before she met his gaze in the looking glass.

“What’s goin’ on?” he asked, glancing out the window. Weren’t nothing suspect there, with folk going on about their business like they’d been doing the whole time. The constant threat of their past pursuers and threats had become nearer a shadow, but wouldn’t be nothing knotting that tension in her. Sadie ain’t jumped at shadows before and damn if she’d even jump at threats, so something had to be going on to have her riding cautious over shooting with zeal. “Pinkertons?” Hazarded that guess as the first thought, their ‘official’ ties to the government made them agents more like to be found here in the clutches of civilization, licking their wounded pride or courting some new benefactor.

Sadie shook her head and stepped further into the shop, glancing at the barber what’d been cleaning up, minding his business, and paying them no outwards attention. She came off cautious and suspicious; weren’t ready to elaborate with any ease or comfort with ears what weren’t his alone to be hearing it. “You got some side or back door?” she asked the man, cut to the chase and quick about it.

The barber ain’t even blinked twice to that demand; instead, he gave a subtle gesture towards the rear of the shop. “Opens to the alley,” he said, unassuming. Figured that folk what’d lived under the thumb of Angelo Bronte’d be used to unwelcome visitors and had ways to get past them. The Italian bastard’d no doubt had some enforcer scheme or security tax to be collected what’d have them all wanting an exit, or some way to hustle out their extra cash before the thugs took it.

“Good.” The safety of an escape route outwardly calmed Sadie and she started towards it, pausing next to him. “Ain’t real trouble,” she placated, and then ruined the effect of the statement when she added the tense: “Yet.”

This he’d heard before and from her own mouth; she’d a habit of understating risks and taking the damnably hardest paths, overcomplicating the means of it in her rush to get things done. He’d a wariness of that, enough that he reached out for her wrist, paused and pulled her close. An intimate stance to onlookers and he put his arm along her waist, turned them to hide her profile from outside eyes and any hidden guns what might’ve been aimed for her. “You care to explain what the hell that means?” he asked harshly, mind that he’d done the favour of keeping his tone hushed.

Sadie looked up at him, a bit of fight sparking in her eyes. “Not here, Arthur,” she said. “I’ll explain at the room.” Her compromise felt strained and the firm intonation to it spoke to there ain’t being much in the way of options otherwise.

“Why’s it feel like I’m about to get shot at?” he asked her, quick and dry. Arthur sighed and let go her of wrist, gestured that she ought take the lead and she did, stepping away and towards the exit. This time, he kept pace with her. “Maybe cause that’s what usually happens when you get like this,” a mutter given as he done so.

“That ain’t always true and you know it,” she called back. “Sometimes I’m the one that gets shot at instead.” Sadie hold the rear exit, brief in checking the alley before she stepped out. No gunshots triggered at her sudden exposure, but that grim certainty of them coming up soon weren’t leaving him.

“Ain’t much better,” he grumbled. Complaints aside, his eyes were alert for problems and persons what might be waiting, what might show too much interest in the pair of them as they stepped through the shaded, isolated alleyway. He didn’t like the unsurety of the feeling, of there being danger without his knowing quite what sort or shape it’d take. Made it hard to define, all too easy to mark any and everything he could see as hazard until he knew more.

They kept to the side routes, mostly; ducked through shadows and dealt out tricks what he knew to keep a tail off them. Weren’t any signs they were followed, but they was best served by being wary after this damn year and all its cursed fortunes. Sadie kept an eye ahead, checked their path and looked ready to slip into the first doorway any time something caught her attention, diverted her need to get them out into some desire to keep them hid, ever brief before their pace’d pick up again.

Were only once they was in the rented room and the door locked that he turned full attention back on her. “What the hell was that about?”

Sadie walked along the walls of the room, checking the windows and securing them where they’d been left unlatched. When she were satisfied about that, the sightlines from the slatted blinds clear of immediate danger, she leaned back on the wall and let out the breath she’d been keeping locked in. She looked at him, apprehensive in the ways her eyes didn’t quite meet his gaze, settled just below or above as though it’d disguise what was going on. His brow quirked up and she let out a heavier breath to that, started spitting out the details.

“Had a run-in I weren’t expecting,” she explained. Hesitated here, ready to keep it anonymous, but he’d be asking after it and she looked to realize it, shoulders tense and arms crossed low over her stomach. “Turns out that Dutch’s in Saint Denis.”

That-

Felt like some vice clenched over his chest, tension coiled quick and tight where he couldn’t chase it. What he and Sadie had going on between them fell as full on complicated, where he ain’t got the full emotional strength yet to sort it out, but it weren’t nothing to hearing that. Felt like them words threw him into the centre of a goddamn labyrinth, hit him with the weight of a train and sucked his breath away. All his energy’d been poured to surviving, healing up, and processing that the life he knew’d gone to ash. Took all he had to get through them three focuses on the day-to-day, without things what’d make it worse.

Like hearing of Dutch being here.

In the same city.

Hell.

Arthur ain’t known, then, what to think or how to think it with the way his thoughts started spinning and spiralling back to that final night, them final moments when he watched Dutch turn from him, leaving him to die without giving words to his sacrifice. Tightened that unseen grip in his chest, made it hard to recoup the breath that the news’d struck from him.

He shook his head, slow, like that might clear it. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “You-“ gestured to her- “saw Dutch?” Gestured to the world outside their room. “Here in Saint Denis?” Had to be sure he’d heard that right before he could think to do more than be floored by it, the idea of seeing Dutch again ‘bout the same as if Hosea lived and breathed; the man would’ve turned ghost to get away, run some direction where the waters were cooler, but Saint fucking Denis? Couldn’t be.

Sadie let out a huff of breath, a laugh tinged with her bitter recollection. “Didn’t just see him,” she said, hooking her thumbs under her belt, looking all like she were trying to stay calm – or calm as Sadie Adler ever could be – on the topic, but her hands were shaking in the motion, forced still by the grip. “The jackass bought me a beer, then said as much as not that I’m dead if we cross paths again.” A cold, sour smile surfaced with her own shake of her head, dismissive to the threat, indignant of it.

Some old, loyal fool in him tried to call out the insult and demand respect for a man what’d near raised him, but he lost his grip before it took. Anger. Disbelief. Questions. Goddamn storm of them three aspects rose up in his head and fought loud to be heard, beating aside logic and reason like they was dried leaves in the wind. “Micah there too?” he asked, settled on that. Cold, dangerous, and something what he could anchor on to start sorting it out. Micah and Dutch; the two’d been the last he’d seen before succumbing to the cold, weren’t sure they’d’ve kept up their alliances after the revelation of the rat. Had to assess that risk and know it first, before he could sort out some sense in the suddenly thick air.

“No. Told me he had some ‘understanding’ with him,” she said, a mocking tone to the term. “Like it were a gentleman’s deal or some bullshit!” She shook her head again, her anger loosed here; she stepped off from the wall and started pacing around the room.

“You want to explain it from the start?” He’d no idea what were going on here, what he were expected to do or say and, more than that, no goddamn idea what’d actually happened outside this reference of a threat. His hands were shaking as his pulse picked up, mouth dry as he poured over words, reactions what might do and yet none of them sufficed to capture the idea that Dutch ain’t hidden low, but were here. In Saint Denis. After leaving him to die, leaving John to die. Felt the pounding start of the headache now, surged behind his eyes as an ache burned in his chest. Anger. Betrayed. How was he supposed to deal with all this shit at once?

“There ain’t much to explain, Arthur,” is how she went on, paced back the other way now. Thankful, brief, that the room weren’t small like their one in Valentine, so her steps weren’t crowding him, making more dense the air what filled with unknowns beating at his brain. “I was having a beer and he walked in like he owned the damn place. Recognized me right quick. I’d no chance to just leave.” The pitch of her voice rose, then broke with frustration and he caught the first hint of her own confusion. The idea that for all her surety in action, her mind weren’t handling this all too well neither. “I’d nothing to say to him, so’s I said I were passing through. Alone.” A shrug, for all the final word came out firm. One thing of certainty, that she’d kept his survival quiet, and after being left to die, could he blame her? Hell, maybe. Dutch... Shit, the man’d been a father and... fuck. “Seemed about all I could say.”

“And?” Arthur knew his voice grew loud with anger, his frustration easier to hold onto and push through him, find some strength in it that’d exhaust him later, but see him through the now. The hallmarks of one of their fighting moments tainted the air. He clenched his fists, forcing himself to breathe. His chest hurt, constricted tight, and he could feel the cough waking from its shallow slumber.

Sadie looked at him, angry too. Ready to lash out. Both of them with tempers burned short at the best of times and here came one of them worst of times instead. “And what?” she challenged. “Weren’t like we’re old friends or nothing. Dutch said he’d no trace of you or John. That’s it. Said some garbage of having an understanding with those what stood with him and got all cold when I asked about you.” She were worked up, scratching impatiently at her arm for lack of meaningful motion. “Made it clear that I don’t ‘enjoy’ his ‘protection’ no more,” she added with a sharp laugh and them words cut deep in him, the threat meant by them familiar to what retaliation he’d himself dealt to deserters long before. “Left damn fast as I could. That’s it.”

“Where’d this happen?” Thick words crept slow from his throat, as the wheezing started up, breath struggling to get through his choked emotion and constricted airways.

That had her stop, glaring at him with warning bright in her eyes. “No. You ain’t doing that, Arthur,” she said, walking over and grabbing his arm, her grip the sort what she’d not let easy go from. “Don’t you dare.”

Arthur pulled his arm from her grasp and felt the bruising press of her fingers as he shook her off, looked sharp at her as he struggled to dispel them flecks of black from the edges of his vision where it burned red with anger. “You ain’t knowing what I’ll do,” he said. “Just-“

“What, Arthur?” Sadie grabbed at his wrist that time, fingers locked firm, and damn her that she refused to let go. “You told me he _left_ you! And he done it more than the once. You goin’ and ask him why? Bastard’ll just lie.”

Truths what rooted strong in her words done little to sooth him. “You ain’t sure on that,” he said, breath picking up pace. Anger and loss warred strong and he couldn’t figure which to go on. Knew it were a fool’s errand to go out there, had told himself the same idea for weeks, but faced with the idea that he might talk with Dutch... Arthur couldn’t help that half a year of hell’s descent meant less than the twenty before it. Instinct _still_ wanted him to goddamn find Dutch and get some sense of it and that had to be the real screwed up part of him.

“Neither are you,” she accused, pulling hard on his arm. He stood, immobile, shaking with anger, the cough trying to force its way out. More days than not it’d been fine, but once his temper flared, it got hard to think. Hard to breathe. “It ain’t worth it no more, Arthur.” This time nearer to pleading than she got, like she were trying to slow them both down. Like she might get him to listen, or make herself listen all the same.

His breathing caught and stalled, triggered the one of the fits what he’d tried to leave behind in Valentine, wracking his shoulders and tightening the knot in his lungs until he near couldn’t make them work no more. The fucking coughing cut through him and he staggered back, turned away as it splintered and forced air into him in sparse measure. This she let him go for, but ain’t stepped far, ready to step in if it worsened; habit and reflex now, holding them together even when words were thrown hot between them.

“I weren’t,” he managed, squeezing words out between coughs, fist clenched and beat against his sternum. “I weren’t _worth_ it, you get that?” A painful admission made harder with lungs not filling, and he stumbled to the dresser, leaned his weight on it. “If Micah ain’t there, poisoning him...” Maybe he could force reason, find the Dutch what’d raised him, what’d held to the ideals he taught.

“Ain’t you hear what I said?” Sadie strode across the room, steps heavy. Away from him in her pacing, trying to distance herself. “Said they had an understanding! That poison’s in, Arthur. It’s set, it’s deep, and ain’t nothing to be done on it.”

“Won’t know until we try,” he tried. Wheezing coughing’d started to even out as he dragged deep breaths in, holding them until he felt like he’d burst. He tasted the warm copper on his tongue and spat out a thick clod of mucus, the bright blood freshly torn from aching lungs.

Sadie kept pacing, her step stuttering when she saw what’d landed on the wooden grain of the dresser, reined her breath sharply in before she spoke again. “I heard you trying for weeks,” she countered, voice running rough, closer to breaking. “Micah were only part of it. Shit, Arthur. We both know that! Took Dutch’s decisions, still listened to him when he lay down the lay. Weren’t only Micah’s poison what ruined him.”

The hard part came that she were right and he knew it. Arthur knew and had known it; admitted in the scratchings of his journal that it’d been a slow descent, started long before Micah’s rot set, before the bastard entered the gang with his scheming, conniving ideas. Arthur stared at the wood grain, frustration boiling in him as he put his focus to steadying his breathing. Anger still surged and he took the energy of it; seemed all he’d be fit to feel, with his hands balled into tight fists.

“That don’t make it easier.”

Part of him fractured on them words, sending bits of his resolve to fall away on the winds of hate and regret. He stood there, hating that he couldn’t do a damn thing to save Dutch now, that he ain’t been able to do it then; hating that he felt he needed to try. Like he might help him, save him the way the man’d saved him from one life, even if he’d sentenced him to death in the next. Hated that he stood the fool to hope it possible, like this were a thing to deal with at all.

“Damnit,” he ground out through gritted teeth and his jaw ached for it. He couldn’t paint Dutch full with that foul brush, couldn’t damn him completely. But. He had to be smart. Think, for himself, same as he’d told John to; get out of that damn spiral, that damn cycle what’d kept them in, the riptide what drowned them all.

“God. Fucking. Damnit!”

Arthur kicked the dresser, cursed and strode away, needed to do something more than barely breath, be it to hurt or punch something. Someone. Hell, himself if he could. If Sadie wouldn’t stop him from throwing that first fist.

She stood by the door, watched him stalk around the room; let him burn the anger out as he punched the wall once, kicked at the dresser a fair few times for sins it ain’t ever committed. It were only after he’d stopped striking out and started pacing, slow and unsure, in circles, that she risked coming up near him. Not for fear of being hurt; ain’t in him to do that, not to her, but because he’d needed the space, to bleed out his grief in its disguise of anger. She stopped him with a touch to his arm, light compared to the death grip she’d applied earlier, turned him to face her; couldn’t bring himself to look full at her, got a glimpse of her eyes shining with hurt for him, cast his gaze quick and shameful to the side, to the ground where he might stay conflicted.

She reached up with both hands, fingers firm, guiding him to look at her; the sight of him lost to the anger seemed to have drained hers away and he blinked against the sting of his frustration, his grief, trying to see her the way she’d set to look at him. They stood like that along moment, her thumb gentle as she traced his jawline; the heat of his emotions started to bleed away under her touch, irony rich that her spitfire nature, her persistence of being there _with_ him could bring some sense of calm back to him, tired and drained as he felt in the wake of his outburst.

“You ain’t wrong, being angry,” she said, soft in that moment between them. This part of her what she kept under lock and key, had only showed it them first weeks of her grieving and now, here with him. “Don’t change nothing, but ain’t wrong.” The rich conviction of her words struck him, carved itself some reason in the haze of his thoughts; told him it weren’t that she expected him to be calm, only that she wanted him to be safe. With her. Showed it as she pulled him gentle towards her, stepping closer all the same as she stretched up, pressed her lips against his mouth, brief. A connection. Reminder that she were there, even if she’d been the one he’d been arguing with, if more against himself and that void of loss, that mourning what weren’t even right to be mourning.

That brought him out of the darkness of his self hatred, dislodged that painful spiral, and pulled him back into the room. Wrapped up in what went to hell, he lost himself plenty easy. His journal stood tribute to that, diatribes of questions, causes he could and couldn’t understand. He closed his eyes, found himself again there in her grasp, found it easier to put his arms around her, hold her, than the holding to the hurtful, questioning cant of his thoughts.

“Hurts so goddamn bad. Makes me angry all the damn time,” he admitted heavily.

“Kind of like some nightmare you ain’t able to wake from?” she suggested, an echo of her own grieving sentiment, the anger she’d fostered to it, and to herself, when they first met.

Arthur looked at her. Honest looked at her. Not at her face, her hair, or the way her clothes were worn and wrinkled from the day; he looked at her eyes, saw them hints of humanity she rarely let surface. The reflection of grief, loss, and abandonment he’d come to learn too intimate were there and known in her gaze. All she’d done to move past it, to gain vengeance or peace, and she still carried it. Still stood with him though. Still fought to save John. Abigail. Arthur himself. That fire burned strong in her, too bright sometimes, but it were there. She were stronger than anyone’d ever thought of her and here she was, using all that strength to hold him up, to brace him when he ain’t able to hold himself to logic and truth in that desperate need to reverse the way life’d fallen apart. Foolish woman, dedicated to him, though he were grateful to it. Would’ve died without it. Probably should’ve.

He took a long breath, held it long as he could before he let it out, slow as his beaten lungs could manage, like it could keep him there, with her. “How’s it that you near kill me with what trouble you get in, then make awful sense when I call you out on it?” he asked her, chagrined. Bitter, but ain’t at her. At himself. At Dutch. A moment hitting when maybe all that they had going on, what he felt and wanted to feel, weren’t so complicated. Like he could see less about what he done wrong with those he’d been close with before, maybe more of what he could do right with Sadie.

Sadie smiled, damnably knowing and lauding it, breaking the tension by the jest of it. “I always been good at getting out of trouble,” she remarked, some playful, some true. “Ain’t no matter how I get there in the first place.”

Plenty others bore the burden of consequence for her, vicious cycle that it were. “You ain’t the one paying for it half the time either,” he countered, fingers rubbing slow circles at the small of her back, holding her close against him, drawing on that odd stability she gave him for all her own calm shattered at the drop of a hat. Hell of a pair that made them, tempest and earthquake rolled together and needful of the other.

“Stop complaining,” she chided. “I get results is all.”

Arthur scowled at her, some playful lilt finding its way into it as the tension broke. The venom that’d ramped up in him started to drain away. He wanted to hurt, to attack, and act; but it’d do what? All this’d triggered that damn ache in his chest, threw him back down. Weren’t right yet, to chase down Dutch and get them answers sorted. Wanted it solved, but goddamn if it weren’t time yet and he’d promised her he’d do his best to mend. That’s what he goddamn had to focus on. Them and living and breathing and mending.

He sighed and didn’t so much try to let it go as put it down. Aside. “Still don’t fully get you, Sadie Adler,” he muttered, resting his forehead against hers. “But I’m wanting to try to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two shorter chapters this week. There's more intensity in them, what with the plot moving ahead in directions that prove why Arthur really just hates Saint Denis. I don't think Sadie'd be much of a fan after her meeting with Dutch neither.
> 
> Heads up for the update of the 24th: _Might_ be only one chapter. Work shortened a major deadline on me (went from "hey you have until end of January" to "ok, end of February" and now "nope, you have to get all that done by the 22nd") and I expect that crunch time to wipe me each day this week. The typing-up part of ASM doesn't take much energy, but I wanted the heads-up out there just in case I can't quite make it.
> 
> Want to find winning lottery ticket and become full-time fanfic writer. #lifegoals
> 
> \- Kichi @[KichiWhy](https://twitter.com/KichiWhy) (Twitter)


	41. Chapter X: Willowstead - 16: Leaving The Past Where It Belongs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The road to the undoing of the Cartwrights is hazey with smoke and mirrors, but Dutch has discussions of how to clear the air. Arthur and Sadie are intent on putting Saint Denis behind them, hopefully for good this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

Business favoured him more and more the longer that he retained this connection to the Cartwright goals, his own investment in it a passing interest that allowed Dutch some measure of profit and comfort. This new task laid out, of freeing and converting criminals to their grand illusion of enterprises, suited him and granted him a scapegoat to take the pressure of law’s eyes off the van der Linde name without diminishing himself. Regretful that Saint Denis possessed still a tang of being controlled, bitter, but he would endure that to thrive, as he had promised the Adler woman.

Three matters, however, hovered at the edge of his contemplations and each tempted him for action: The mystery of the Cartwrights, a family not in power when last he came through Saint Denis and now so firmly entrenched it were as though they had always been; the reluctance of McIntosh to speak clear and true of his hesitance triggered by Sadie’s appearance in Rhodes; and then Sadie Adler herself, widow turned warrior and quite clearly _against_ him when pressed. This last point concerned him less than the two prior, true; he had no responsibility to her now and no need to foster her loyalty. She’d played her cards as with Marston and Morgan, which meant they had been played against him, but ultimately she was one woman. Set adrift and dangerous, but without others to ally with, she represented an imperfect irritation. McIntosh, he knew, would be sorted out by Miss Cartwright in time.

The family, however... it gave him good reason to meet with Trelawny again, drinking late into the night at a saloon in the city’s outskirts.

“There is nothing intrinsically _new_ about the Cartwright name,” Josiah had been saying, the flair of his hand dispelling some of the mystery with his statement. “There is quite the established mausoleum in the cemetery, with roots of this family line crept into many crevices and corners of the city for more than half a century.”

“Strange that our pompous friend, Signor Bronte, did not mention this competition to his influence,” Dutch noted, slowly turning his glass in a circle, mind idly chasing the ideas of how to approach this problem.

“Not at all!” His voice rose in pitch and flourish; ever the dramatic showman, and predictably comfortable in that passion. “You see, the Cartwrights were extremely legitimate business folk until the conflagration at Braithwaite Manor.” Unsaid was the truth they both knew: Dutch himself had ordered it burned in retaliation for the theft of one of his own from the sanctity of camp. “It was only after the ‘tragedy’ that Samuel commenced his unique approach to operations.”

Dutch pushed aside the glass, favouring to draw a cigar instead. He ran his fingers along it, cutting off the tip with practiced ease. “I understood that Samuel Cartwright Sr passed away some years ago,” he said, a note of doubt allowed in his tone. One would expect the siblings to have commenced their aspirations in the wake of his wake, irony aside.

“Quite so, and with no heirs apparent!” Josiah leaned forward in his chair, the magician’s spark in his eyes at a trick he’d been challenged to unravel. “Until Samuel Jr and Serah appeared to lay claim to his investments.” He paused, the inclination of his head highlight to a detail of clarity. “Shortly before his death, in truth. It is hard to find staff that survived the household transition, but the old Cartwright’s death is in city records and the rest one can piece together by understanding that Miss Cartwright is rumoured to have been most thorough in cleaning out staff that might contest their claims. Indeed, she completed that task shortly before she was arrested for killing her own purported farther.”

“With six bullets to the back, one could hardly assume his frail constitution to blame,” Dutch remarked with a low rumble of amusement. “Justice chose to turn aside?” He lit the cigar, drawing the embers to take deep hold. “Law is filled with fools, as we know, but to ignore such a blatant familial coup stinks of refuse.”

Trelawny smiled and shrugged up a shoulder, leaning back. “I understand that Samuel Jr produced the most legitimate of documents to support their claim. Then, in a most heart-rending act, refuted his own sister as criminal, leaving her to Sisika as disgrace to the name and endearing himself to the legitimate circles of Saint Denis as a sole surviving child from a family torn apart by greed.” Mocking, though light, came with his words, a faux pass of his fingers along his eyes as though wiping away tears. “With no further claims to the estate, he was left to manage the lucrative investments. A tidy, flawless fraud, if one may so admire.”

The very sort what would inspire forgeries and charlatans for years to come, without doubt; there could be no honour among thieves, but admiration? That they did allow. “I would think Serah the type to bear a grudge to her brother’s betrayal,” Dutch commented, “yet they appear as though reconciled.”

“That is where the intrigue thickens,” Josiah said this with self-serving pleasure. He’d been quite taken by unravelling the Cartwrights, it seemed. “Rumours and myths abound, though the common thread is that it was all to plan.”

“You, my friend, are no fool to smoke and mirrors.” This clear, confident intimation that Trelawny knew more to the truth than any other worked, caught up a spark of interest in the other man’s eye. It was his charm and skill, his magician’s toolkit as it were, that kept him from being fooled by the trade of liars.

Trelawney chuckled and took a drink from his dram of scotch. “Indeed,” he demurred, “but the smoke here is quite pervasive, you see. I will clear it, but as with any delicate matter, it takes time. My early measure is that they have found or used Sisika in some way that required her personal attendance there to establish. To safeguard or increase their fortune, I know yet not. But, you have such a friendship with them that you could help clear the air?”

There it came, the moment when the favour was requested; Trelawny worked within his own economy, information given less freely and more in exchange for other trifles of value, be they acts or illusions. Dutch expected and traded frequently with him in this currency and arched a brow.

“You have my attention.”

“Samuel keeps two ledgers on his person,” Trelawny explained, leaned forward anew. “The black one is his accounting of legitimate holdings. The red is that of their shadow ones.”

“This is not new information,” Dutch chided. “I’ve seen and read both, but there was no tale of treasures hidden.”

“That red ledger is key, Dutch,” his careful correction. “The information is there, but lacking the cipher to break it, it reads as nonsense. Obtain both and we can attain their wealth and, in so doing...” Trelawny trailed off, a suggestion that he might be fit to buy out the interest of the Pinkertons much as Cornwall had purchased it to commence with if they could pull this off. An appealing prospect.

“Always illuminating to know you, Josiah.” Dutch gave him an approving nod. “Now, we should adjourn. A busy day today is but a hint of tomorrow’s tasks.”

-

Took too much of his weary soul to agree to leave it all behind; to leave Dutch there in Saint Denis without seeking him out. Sadie’d stayed with Arthur during their last day, watched it eat at him with that infuriating and complex blend of guilt and grief. Kept close, both of them, to the hotel until the rifles he’d ordered came delivered and the last of their needs were met. Even as the wants of closure were left to wither and die on the cobbled streets.

Saint Denis couldn’t disappear to the dust behind them fast enough. They’d set out in the predawn shadows, taking roads that went wide around the dense core of the city, avoiding the few sleepy denizens out and about at this hour. Dismissing them without greeting when even she noticed them, eyes alert only for van der Linde and his new friend.

Only after the last bridges and boardwalks were past them did Sadie start to lose the certainty that they were being watched, at risk of being followed; even then she weren’t ready to discount it, the sting fresh and sharp over what’d happened when she thought them free. Brief, that content moment, before shattered by fortune’s cruel hand. The glances she spared to their rear now and again showed nothing and they rode a steady canter for some time to increase distance, outpace any idle chase given.

After that final dinner taken in their room, the supplies bought up, and the stabling costs for Zeus and Eceni, they were down to coins mostly. The recompense cash’d served them well, but its demise rose the spectre of work absent the auctions of Valentine and the fearful quiet of Rhodes. Sadie talked idle with Arthur over ideas, asked after them times he’d chased down bounties for payment, heard him talk to that and them times he’d foiled the bounty hunters himself. Words that distracted them both and pulled a blanket of comfort over them, something normal to restore their confidence in being _out_ of the darkness of recent, shared events.

“It ain’t easy work the way robbing folk is,” were his summation about bounty hunting, made with a non-committal shrug up of his shoulder. “I only ever done it to lower my profile. Play nice with the law a bit and they don’t shoot quite so fast or accurate when you clean out the bank.”

“Seems like all you ever done were meant to grease the gears of the next job,” she commented, slowing Zeus as the city turned to memory behind them – and, her mind dared hope, Dutch too. “What’s it a professional outlaw does when he ain’t thieving or preparing for thieving?” Sadie’d seen plenty that some drank and gambled, them hobbies frequently seen around camp, but Arthur ain’t much done either in sight of the others. Had his drinks now and again, played dominoes with the ladies when they called him for it, but otherwise he’d been there so rare, it were hard to put a label to his recreations.

Arthur laughed his short, self-effacing laugh what came up whenever too much focus and interest turned on him, made uncomfortable still by it. “Drinking, mostly,” said without much care. “Gambled some,” he added, confirmed what she’d seen of the others, at least.

“Journaled too?” she asked. Sadie ain’t ever given up her interest in that habit of his, quick to tease how she wanted a peek at what them pages said about those around him. Arthur liked being loud about the obvious complaints, but getting him to talk about anything deeper were challenging, at best. That journal of his held them answers, of that she’d certainty.

“Never took much time,” he figured. “Ain’t no big secrets to it. Good way to remember things what I’d seen and learned. Some way to track them thoughts what I couldn’t shed any other way.”

Sadie smiled, then decided to laugh and press the matter some. “The girls liked to place bets on what it was you wrote,” she commented. “Seems it interested them.”

That had him snort, amused. “Yeah, and what was your bet?”

She shook her head. “I ain’t never really came close to them enough to come in on it,” she said. “Abigail, sure, but Mary-Beth kept her head in them romances of hers, Tilly in surviving, and Karen wanted nothing more than the bottle after... well.” Once Sean’d been killed, the woman’s search for the bottom of the whiskey barrel ain’t much let up, rough habit of hers even before that. Sadie shifted in the saddle, stretching out her back some. “That don’t mean I ain’t interested in what it said, mind you.”

Arthur laughed the spiteful one again, directed at himself. “Mostly talked about the fool what was writing in it,” he said. “How things were a mystery to him.” Still hard, like pulling slivers or teeth, to get him to say more than that, but he did hitch up a corner of his mouth in a grin. “I wrote some about this unholy force of nature what was called Sadie Adler,” he added.

Sadie laughed loud and let the matter slide then, interested more in getting them back to Willowstead over pushing him over his deprecating nature right then. “Well, writing and drinking and gambling ain’t going to make bank,” she hazarded, back to their new problem of funds. “Maybe I’ll drop by Rhodes day after next, see what sort of posters he’s got lined up and if I can’t haul something in.”

“Trains’re easier,” he reminded her, always first to propose the outlaw answer.

“I ain’t wanting the law’s attention that way,” she sent back. “Ain’t the right time for it, yet.”

-

Playful bits of conversation, forced, gave them both reason to try and relax, but each kept checking their flank and looking for the white horse Dutch rode or some other harbinger of bad things come for them. Arthur wrote it all to another foul taste of Saint Denis, determined to not improve his opinion of city living. Sure, it gave anonymity, but that were a double-edged blade. They could hide, but so could others and with coincidence being a fickle bastard, the risk of encountering a bad contact were too damn high.

Give him the open plains again, where you knew what was riding in by line of sight and from miles away. No more of this having to screen a crowd and second guess what stood around the corner, all that damn mess that came with the pressures of civilized living.

Weren’t a help that his mood’d soured after Sadie challenged him to try something other than robbing. Easy to claim he could make that change, but habits and life skills, they weren’t so easy to tame. Weren’t so pliable the longer he lived, reluctant to stray from familiar paths onto unknown trails. Instinct always would be threats and violence first. Any time he’d tried else turned to the same conclusion of chasing, shooting, and stealing enough times he’d learned not to expect no other outcome.

This whole need to look ahead and figure on a course were new enough for him, change enough to busy his thoughts for days. Always before it’d been Dutch and Hosea calling the shots, directing him where to go and who to shoot, laying out them big jobs what fed and clothed the gang. Them last few months, when he’d been sick and desperate to get John and the others an escape, all his planning went to supporting them. He’d his end ready, that of dying once they was free, and that were enough. Now, he stood, survived, and were expected to be his own damn man.

Late in the morning was when they were set to come on near Rhodes, slowly peeling off that sickly tension of being seen and known again. Arthur worked his way steadily through a pack of biscuits and an apple as they rode, appetite come crawling back his way the more the coughing, the aches, and the fevers receded.

Sadie reached over and stole the half-eaten apple out of his hand, liberating a bite from it before she tossed it back his way. Zeus danced to the side, pulling her rider out of reach before he could react. She shot him a smug, challenging type of smile and he felt his irritation at her start to bleed away, reflection come up in its place. She’d changed full in half a year, and emerged stronger for it. Fiercer. Maybe he ought try to emulate that? Stop telling himself it were impossible and start seeing how much he could retrain himself. Longing as he done for the simpler life out west weren’t serving no one but his memories and he’d always been more to solve than sunder.

“You really like testing me, don’t you,” he remarked, gesturing at her with the apple.

“Helps me feel alive, Arthur,” she said, downright glib about it.

“Most’d say that ain’t the smartest way to stay alive,” he said with a shake of his head, a chuckle shedding further that heavy weight lain over the mood.

“Most,” she said, emphasis on the word, “ain’t me.”

“You think you get special treatment?”

This triggered an open laugh. “No,” shot back. “I’s just know you better than most by now. You ain’t going to shoot me over an apple.” She nudged Zeus back into step with Eceni, relaxed. “I figured, if anything, you’d shoot me for dragging you back from hell’s embrace.” Casually said and with a shrug, but he’d the sense that maybe she were checking that theory for truth.

Arthur thought on that, much as he’d done a dozen and more times before; didn’t remember much of them first few days. The concept of it, and what he kept running his mind through to try and extract more details from the muddled haze, were that he ain’t been well enough to feel much but anger. “Thought about it a couple times,” he admitted. “More of a hate, though. Angry that I’d had to stick ‘round.” His hands crossed lazily over the saddlehorn. “So goddamn sick and so goddamn tired of all the running. I’d convinced myself that if I got John out, then I’d be good to die. Ain’t never occurred to me that surviving’d be an option by that point.” All that pain in living and breathing’d dulled the appeal of it the longer he lasted anyway. “This world don’t like my type and the law don’t want it. I guess I were ready to be done, even if it were a coward’s way out.”

“Not a coward,” Sadie corrected, looking at him askance. Like the idea he’d thought himself weak for the rout felt funny or off to her. “Fool, maybe,” she clarified. “Always so busy protecting the gang that you never thought of you. Selfless bastard.” This she delivered with a teasing smile what barely served to sweeten the bitter truth of the accusation, then tempered the look to serious. “And the world? The law? They can all fuck right off,” she added, vehement. “I want you and I’m keeping you long as I can.” The conviction of her voice struck him firm in the chest, always did, like she’d come to peace with laying claim to him, no matter how little they spoke on the intricacies of it. This were close as they came to affirming it anyways.

Arthur let the conversation idle there, ain’t yet ready to find and fuel the words what were his part on it. Still doubted himself worth her. Still questioned his right when she’d been taken from her everything and for less than a year. Tended to let her lead on it the most, wanted to make sure it weren’t ever him making her do anything. Part because she were a fiery sort to be fierce in her retribution, part because he’d a mind to keep this lasting long as he could. Slow it were, but he’d come to like the wanting. The holding. The having. More than the sex, though; weren’t ever that the carnal act what drove him the way it’d done as a youth, hard and horny at the first sign of something pretty. Spent years distanced from it, from touch itself, and thought himself fine for it. But now, found himself opening to the contact, the things that happened outside the sheets. The way he’d wake up with her slept next to him, head on his shoulder. Or that smile she had when thinking of or teasing him. Them times when she’d sit next to him, their legs touching, talking ideas and idle concepts. Some days, the craving for her had him reaching out, putting arms around her as he stepped up behind her, pulled her into quiet embraces and just breathed with her a time. Foolish little gestures of affection what gave him more pleasure than they ought, and ones he’d hold to long as he could.

He’d figure himself out to some sense, in them moments together, idle and connected. Maybe he’d be able to figure out the ‘them’ of it too. ‘Fore all this, he’d been content that she never denigrated his little gestures and most of all, she reciprocated them something fierce. Unspoken understandings in the gestures what would serve them in the here and now and he liked that more than he really deserved to.


	42. Chapter X: Willowstead - 17: Wrong Side Of The Law

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One door closes and another door opens, only trouble spills out of this one same as it has for all the rest. Time for Arthur to figure out how best to annoy the law and Sadie to figure out how to keep him from being kept in jail, much less recognized.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

Arthur finished the last bite of the apple and spit the seeds aside as he looked ahead once more, knowing that with Rhodes near, their risks of encountering Pearson were up. Strauss, presumably, stayed over at Blackwater the way he’d claimed, which left them with Dutch to the southeast and Pearson here as known risks and he braced for luck to crash down and uncover more problems before solutions were sorted.

What he spied ahead of them weren’t neither though. Crossroads coming up were supposed to be empty, based on dozens of times he’d ridden past it before. The sight of smoke that drifted lazily off a campfire set back from the road ain’t unfamiliar, nor the tent propped at an angle near it. But the crossroads themselves, that’d be the problem. There a jailcart lay broke, a wheel mired in muck, horse team long freed and fled. Bodies, too, he noted quick; two folded down in the cover of the wagon, bled out from the gut on one. The other’d gone quick, brains lost before blood when clipped by a bullet over the cover of the wagon. Third body were half from the campsite, facedown and unmoving.

Eceni slowed with his quick, steady pull on her reins; she shied some, caught sense of his sudden shift to alert, but he kept her controlled with a soothing word. Sadie drew Zeus up behind him, eyes on the same scene. “What the hell happened here?” were her words to put voice to the question they both had.

“Nothing good,” were his guess, eyes scanning the fields, the treelines, anything within sight. Arthur tried to figure on if the threat had up and left, or if it lingered under shaded cover. “I’m going ahead, to check it out,” he said as he urged Eceni forward, towards the crossroads. His glance back showed Sadie at least ain’t full followed him, but she’d headed towards the camp instead, alert and revolver drawn. She’d an eye on his back there, so he put his own eyes outwards, looking for the trouble what might still find them.

Moved close and dismounted, checked the cart wheel first; spokes of it had broken, eaten by watery muck that had a different consistency than the rest of the roads after the storms pushed through. Like it’d been churned up and the surface made weak to break under the wheel. Ambush, called his instinct, and he crouched to keep his profile low. Arthur checked on the dead, both of them male, well enough dressed to be contract guns of some skill. Maybe some of Ike’s boys, though no one’d heard much from that group since he helped pare down their numbers by that goodly amount in busting Sean free.

Two dead bounty hunters or contract guns, a third body, and a busted jail wagon; Arthur had the sense that this third corpse were of the same group. Suggested to him that this’d been prisoner transfer or bounty claim gone wrong; ain’t too uncommon a tactic for ‘friends’ of the prisoner to ambush and strike to serve up their freedom, but odd this close to a town and law’s quick response.

Further ruminations were cut short with the snap of a gunshot, slivers of wood bursting off the cart no more than a foot from his head. Arthur cursed and ducked; that shot’d come from the far side of the broken-down husk of wood and iron, meant he had cover to hide behind if they tried again. “Get down!” he shouted back to Sadie, voice gone gravelly in that moment of surprise when suspicion turned to threat and his mind set to fighting. He hauled his new Springfield from the rifle boot lashed to Eceni’s saddle before he put his back to the wagon, hearing another shot ring out. Tried to glimpse around the corner and get a bead on the shooter, but a third shot cut the idea short, sending up slivers of wood where he’d near put his face before the crack of gunfire.

Glanced over to check on Sadie, who’d hauled Zeus about with a firm, one-handed grip on the reins. Her eyes searched the distance, hot and angry, and after a moment, she pulled back and ran her mare across the field, forcing the shooter to decide which target to take.

Certain they’d go for the threat of a moving target over his pinned down position, Arthur ran along to the front of the wagon, intent on gaining a clear angle without sacrificing his cover. Two more shots, both chewed into the wood near him, brought short that idea.

Okay, they wanted the stationary target.

Arthur felt the familiarity of it, being shot at; something that he knew the same as he knew his hands, and there came that surge of comfort to confront something he could quantify, some known threat, that had the curses he muttered less vehement and frustrated than what he’d offered his weakness in health. He counted the seconds between shots to figure if the shooter had a lever-action carbine or a bolt action rifle; his money’d be on carbine by the holes in the corpses, which gave him six or seven shots to wait out total before the reload. Four rang out before this, and that meant two or three left; worth the risk to keep the shooter’s eyes on him over Sadie’s charge. He risked his shot, standing up, sighted down the scope. Saw a burst of something in the distance, bit back an angry snarl as the bullet scraped a line across his shoulder, barely a trace of flesh, but irritating. “Missed me, jackass!” he shouted, intent on being shot at again if it kept her safe. He angled to that bit of motion and this time he spied the shooter through the glass of the scope, shrouded in the shaded tree and he pulled a shot. Drew the bolt back, lined up again; saw the hat fallen, but the shooter ducked and still living. Hard to get the target, small and hugged to the tree as they’d become. He lined up for a clearer shot, finger shifted to the trigger and breath coming out as he applied the gentle pressure to fire it.

Loud pounding of hooves came down from Rhodes, with shouts from law coming that he stop, followed by demands he drop the weapon; all that stalled his shot and he muttered a foul word. Arthur watched the shooter withdraw fast, unseen, then the dark blur of Zeus cut past, Sadie giving chase.

Arthur cursed the lost shot and looked up from the scope, his awareness expanding beyond that narrow field of a target sought, all to find some fair few guns aimed his way. The flash of a deputy’s badge caught his eye, probably the other half of whatever transaction what had been due to happen, come to find it thrown to ruin.

Occurred to him that this weren’t the most innocent position to be found in, bearing arms and amidst the dead. He’d been caught in these kinds of delicate situations before and did a quick count of guns. Four muzzles pointed his way across three lawmen? Time to use some discretion there if he didn’t intend on gaining more in the way of bullet holes. Better days gone past and he’d’ve drawn on them, shot them all dead, but this damn close to Rhodes and three bodies already spread? Would make a hell of a mess for two folk trying to disappear the way he and Sadie were.

Damnit.

With careful, clear movements, Arthur lay his rifle on the driver’s bench and stepped back, hands held up and away from him. “This ain’t what it looks like” he hazarded, cautious. All three were focused on him and the two bodies seen easily from their horses; their looks made it clear they weren’t ready to believe him.

“Clyde,” said the one with the badge, gesturing towards Arthur.

Big burly fellow, rather like the breed of horse his name connected to, dismounted and walked over. He’d been the only one of them what’d not drawn a gun on him, with that remedied when he pushed Arthur away from the wagon and took up his brand new rifle, pointing it his way.

“I said,” Arthur reiterated with a sigh, “that this ain’t what it looks like.” He risked a vague gesture to where the shooter’d been. “They was shooting at me too.”

“Quiet,” the firm command from the deputy not even warranting a look that direction. Like he expected no more than filthy lies to come on the heels of three dead men and fair enough. That happened plenty as he ain’t known many criminals what confessed so readily to their crimes.

Clyde took that as an order, stepped up to drive the butt of his rifle straight into Arthur’s stomach, hard and unforgiving. He doubled over, gasping and it took minutes, felt like hours, before he could get his lungs back from bursting and the coughing stalled. He braced his hands on his knees, shoulders heaving. Took yet more time still to recover when his lungs were drained and a bit of loosened, ruddy mucus came to be spat out to the ground.

“What happened here?” That same firm, petulant demand he’d heard dozens of times from dozens of lawmen since he’d first crossed paths with one.

“See,” he said, breath finally caught, but still bent forward. He glanced over to that Clyde fellow and learned his face for later recompense, if the opportunity arose; weren’t nothing about vengeance to it, just wanted to give the man equal treatment, being fair and all. “I was trying to figure that out when they started shooting at me.”

“And who’s this ‘they’ of yours?”

That’d be the real stupid sort of question what riled him up and Arthur kept patience for plenty of things, but deputies being dumbasses had their way of making his temper answer for him. “I don’t know. The goddamn tooth fairy. Y’all showed up and stopped me from making nice and finding out, y’dumbass.”

Sharp wit didn’t serve him none there, Clyde stepping up again; another hard blow to the gut, another handful of minutes with bile and mucus blocking his throat from breathing right proper. He wheezed for air, unsteady on his feet, but ain’t reined himself in just yet.

“Less lip,” came the suggestion. This deputy seemed comfortable, wearing his authority like well-tailored suit. “Since you’ve no mark to pin this on, we’ll try something easier: What’s your name?”

“Kris.” Pain in his stomach, roaring awake the ache in his chest, made his anger surge up defensively. “Goddamn Kris Kringle.” He shot a cocky grin to the deputy, even as Clyde moved close. This time, Arthur blocked the blow, catching the butt of the rifle with his hands. Didn’t let go, but straightened up fast. Felt and heard the satisfying crack of the man’s face against the back of his head, the crunch of cartilage as the nose broke.

Turned out to be less of a bright ideas, like most of what happened once his ire come up. Arthur’d been smart, at least, to release the rifle and raise his hands quick in a second surrender. Their third man dismounted and grabbed his arm, twisting it behind him to hold him as Clyde reeled from the blow.

Deputy Dumbass looked down at him, cold and calculating with that irritating air of superiority that the government-backed folk favoured. “You are either a moronic fool, on an unlucky one,” he remarked.

“Least I’m consistently a fool,” he retorted. Arthur felt a bit savage then, a toothy smile offered with every ounce of confidence that came from too many times being arrested and too many times escaping the noose. These three had nothing on him and weren’t nothing they could do to make it hold right then and he dawn well knew it.

“These are Skelding’s associates, on a legal job.” A gesture made to the corpses and ruined wagon. “Transferring a prisoner to Sisika for holding, but...” The deputy moved his horse, stepped around to survey the barred cage, barren and empty. “There’s no prisoner here and three dead, contracted bounty hunters, and now I’m thinking that you might either be that prisoner or his friend.” A nod made to the now bloodied Clyde, who looked too happy to comply. “Gentlemen, detain Mister Kringle for questioning back at the jailhouse.”

Arthur moved to jerk his arm free, but the effort were stymied by an explosion of pain in his jaw, where Clyde’d jammed home the butt of his rifle, a thank you for his busted face. Specks and spots spun in his vision and the warmth of blood spilled from a cut in his lip and though he grinned that feral grin what kept him from striking back while angering his enemies here, he figured one thing certain.

Sadie’d not be about to let him live this down.

-

Grass and ground blurred beneath Zeus as Sadie pushed her hard as she dared, leaned forward, close over her body and neck as she coaxed speed out of her lethargic mare. The shooter’d fled on a roan horse, small and with a white blaze down its face. Nimble, fast; she’d seen it before and remembered it. Again. The goddamn woman from Rhodes, the same one she’d seen with Dutch in Saint Denis, and she’d bet her a match to the shooter and rider she’d taken chase after.

She chased her over half a mile, but the other horse had racing blood in its line, Arabian maybe with the size and fleetness of foot. Swift and light in its step, unlike the heavy hoof falls of Zeus, who laboured ever harder to keep pace.

The woman took a side path that she near missed the turning of and Sadie had to rein in Zeus sharply when she saw the murky forms of four or five other riders that lingered along the tree-lined stretch. Her posse, one of the horses riding double – the prisoner from the wagon, she assumed. Poor odds weren’t the dissuading influence that they ought have been, but when she saw the shining white coat of a familiar stallion? Sadie cut her mare straight off the road, ducked into shade and bush to keep from being seen.

The Count, ridden by none other than her ex-benefactor, Dutch van der Linde.

Sadie worked to calm her breathing as Zeus’s sides heaved beneath her, watching them ride away after a few looks back for the pursuer, herself, and she stayed hidden through it. Thought to follow, maybe give a shadowed chase, but she’d left Arthur back at the crossroads and hell if he wouldn’t be irate enough over her giving pursuit without him. Better that she turn back so they could talk on it, figure out how much they wanted to care about this and how smart it’d be to leave it where it lay.

She uttered herself some choice swears before she turned back, retracing the path at half the pace to cool her mare. Zeus’d earned some treats and she offered some praise, a promise of oatcakes for the speed coaxed out of her. Weren’t the same as how Arthur murmured sweet and spoiled his mare, her touch half as soft, but it’d been earned in this race. Her mare’d been built more for power, rather a concept that Sadie liked, but Zeus being able to stand and fight meant less speed and more brutality.

Maybe that’d be why she preferred Arthur, too; fast to anger and unafraid to bear his fists down on the source of the problem, to solve it with brute force. The shortest route to the solution were appealing to her mind and he delivered that well, though lamented her way of cutting even shorting routes along the way.

Thoughts to teasing him on this idled in her mind as she rode back up to the site, then departed quick when she found Arthur being held back and beaten by two folk, with a third watching from horseback, disinterested. She caught sight of a deputy’s badge and groaned; their goddamn luck ain’t improved since Saint Denis, it looked like. They must’ve rode out to meet them bastards what’d been gunned down and now... hell if Arthur didn’t look like trouble to their eyes just by being there. But the beating? The hell’d he say to start that up?

Sadie slowed Zeus further and made herself keep her revolver safely holstered while she figured on how to approach this. Low profile and its subtlety rubbed her the wrong way, but seemed smartest to keep to that, hold to their plan on being unseen best and long as they could. They had to keep from making the paper or the rumours what invariably flitted around every county. Took her a degree of real effort to not shout or shoot as she saw Arthur bent half over, gasping after a fist landed against his side. She clenched her hand, pushed it where these folks’d not see it, and went for cautious and a barely convincing curious as she neared.

“Cal, honey?” she let sweet concern do its best to smooth the grit of her anger at what’d unfolded while she went chasing the damn ghosts of the past. She looked straight at Arthur when she spoke, significant; spoke clear to remind him of the names she’d posted them as. “What’s going on here?”

Mounted still was the deputy and he raised a hand to slow his boys, guiding his horse about to face her better. He had a mild look about him, a lack of care to stop the beating and a tired patience for the lady that had him pause it. He did, at least, have the congeniality to tip his hat towards her, an idea that had her wanting to scoff at the contrasted show of manners. “There’s nothing to see here, ma’am,” he intoned, a soft warning.

Sadie recalled him from the law what’d showed up to the churchyard, when the bodies were displayed and served distraction that day in Rhodes when she’d seen that woman there. First time speaking direct to him, though, and she found herself real offended by his blatant, ill-disguised lie. “Deputy?” She gestured about them. “There’s plenty I see here, but-“ she pointed to Arthur. “Why’s it your boys have taken such a shine to my husband?”

Laughter from Arthur, cocky and irate, came choked also with the tightness in his chest, his breathing hitched painful. “Ain’t nothing, Caroline,” he called, spitting out a mess of blood that splattered bright red in the dirt and it’d better be from a cut lip and not his damn lungs otherwise she’d drop these three dead and damn their plans for subtlety. “They’s just thinkin’ I’m the guy what’d been caged up, or maybe his buddy that broke him out. Idiots ain’t smart enough to figure how I ain’t.” The lip earned him a split one, with what looked suspiciously like his new rifle coming up to butt him in the chin for it.

Stiffened in the saddle, Sadie fought the need to draw her revolver and react, setting her jaw stiff in an attempt at control. “Mistaken identity, deputy,” she assured him, the veneer of her cautious curiosity frayed at the edges. “My husband and I are headed home from a retreat in Saint Denis. We’ve no association with the kind of ilk you’re talkin’ about.” Fractures snaked through her soothing tone all the while, her performance weak. The choked sound from Arthur, half a swallowed laugh, said maybe she weren’t convincing no one with it.

Deputy considered that, smoothing the significant beard he sported. “You got proof?”

Sadie did not roll her eyes at that, but she did grind her teeth. Dug through her saddlebags, fished out the order tally from the supplies store she’d bought up the shaving set at; had something of a date on it and she held that out. The smile she wore had grown terse, clipped, but she maintained it best she could.

Fellow leaned forward and she resisted the urge to kick his smug jaw in, let him glance the paper over and allowed him that chance to look thoughtful. “Seems you were,” he agreed. “Clyde.” This said to the side, to a man with a bloodied face that looked freshly beaten – the source of the ire that’d visited retribution on Arthur? “This means he ain’t your guy.”

Burlish and bloody, this Clyde looked ready to burst and clear wanted to continue beating on Arthur. “Everett,” he sputtered, gesturing to the mess of his face and the bloodied front of his shirt. “What he done?!”

Deputy Everett lingered on the pathetic sight, then drawled slow: “Right.” He raised his hand to acknowledge the point and slow the barrage of complaints the man had ready, then cleared his throat, going official on her. “Ma’am, sorry to say that your husband here might not be the one we’d be looking for, but he done assaulted my man Clyde here.”

Sadie, struggling to keep her patience held while it slipped like water between her fingers, glanced at the purported victim. “He weren’t born that ugly?” she couldn’t help but ask.

That earned a chuckle from Everett and a red-faced glare from Clyde. “No,” he replied calm. “Mind you, ma’am, that Rhodes recently had a change of sorts, and it was a real big one. Sheriff Thomas’s firm on his law-keeping and assault’s a ten dollar fine, or two weeks hard labour to sort it.”

With the recompense what’d made them flush before dwindled to nothing, that ten dollar fine felt nearer to a slap in the face to hear about. “Seems steep for a harmless little bump,” she tried, lessening the severity with her light words, tone taking on a wary cant. “And looks to me like Clyde here already done paid Cal back for it,” added with a nod to Arthur’s split lip, curved in a jagged and feral half-grin in the face of the law.

Pity-filled shake of his head and she near saw red at the condescension of it. “Clyde here’s a citizen of Rhodes,” the man kept on explaining, “and that makes the pair of you lucky. If it’d been an official deputy like myself, well. That’s Sisika or the noose, but usually both.”

Of course. Rhodes’d locked down tight after the mess what killed Sean and weren’t like to have relaxed its standards based on the fear she’d seen writ plain in the face of the folk. That meant she’d need some legal way to sort this, but came up short on options. Sadie sighed. “We don’t got ten dollars.”

“Then I’ve no choice but to take your husband here back to the sheriff and have him locked up.” A nod given to his boys, who looked reluctant to give up their new favourite pastime of beating on Arthur all too soon. “You’ve got until end of day tomorrow to pay up. Sorry, ma’am, but law’s the law and we in Rhodes have been given real good motivation to abide by it of late.”

Sadie had fought plenty of arguments past their valid points, but them were the sorts that ended up solved by shooting or walking away from the idiot what riled her. Neither real applied here; she figured they’d as fast shoot Arthur if she shot Deputy Everett first and hell if she could just walk away and leave him behind. “Sheriff Thomas, right?” she checked, figuring maybe she ought ply him with some wiles or threats instead, since these boys were set on bringing Arthur in.

“That’s right, ma’am.”

“I’ll see if I can’t convince him of some leniency,” she told Arthur more than them boys. “Deputy, you make sure to bring Cal’s horse _and_ his possessions in.” This she added with a pointed look to the rifle in Clyde’s hands, a warning that she knew what her so-called husband owned and meant to carry it away with him when this all came to an end.

Bemused, and maybe a bit wary of this shift, Everett looked at her. Assessing and contemplating with the patience of a man that had all day to ruminate, but he nodded. “That we will, Mrs...” He trailed off and scrutinized her. “What did you say your name was?”

“Caroline Adler,” she said, sat straight and proud in the delivery of it. Sadie then looked direct at Arthur, who gave her his best what-can-be-done expression, which had her roll her eyes. “Do you best not to anger these folk further, dear,” she advised, wresting Zeus about towards Rhodes.

“Wouldn’t never dream of it,” he promised, a flat lie through and through.

Sadie allowed herself the sharp snort of a laugh that time, pushing her mare into a trot, then faster. Time to see if she couldn’t convince the good sheriff to cut them some slack on account of good behaviour and bad timing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This week's been another adventure, wow. Two chapters for y'all, my lovelies, in spite of the work deadline. Gave me a good escape, typing, after a COVID scare (tested negative, thank goodness). I like this section of ASM because it fulfills certain indulgences of Sadie and Arthur being jackasses to other people.
> 
> Today's update marks 20% typed of notebook #2 for ASM! Getting so close to the ending of the penned draft; just started into what I think is going to be the first epilogue of it and that's off in notebook #4, so still got quite a trek!
> 
> Anyone here completed all the challenges? I'm working on the Gambler one and dang if I can sit at a blackjack table for three in-game days and only get one deal with three hits that wins. Arthur's gonna starve on this watch.
> 
> (I lie. I actually get him up, get him food, and bathe him every day or so. Well, the bathing was because he had blood on his hands and that was bugging me.)
> 
> iluall and catch you next week!
> 
> \- Kichi @[KichiWhy](https://twitter.com/KichiWhy) (Twitter)


	43. Chapter X: Willowstead - 18: Bartering Freedom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's not much dignity afforded to the criminal folk arrested in Rhodes, even without the Grays in charge. Otherwise known as: Arthur has to deal with the consequences of breaking a man's face at the scene of a crime as Sadie proves why she really was never meant to be a convincing laywer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

Putting lead to Ike’s boys gave rise to good humours, being an action that served as the perfect recipe to cap off a day. Too many times had Skelding been a thorn in his side and while vengeance counted as a luxury best not afforded, Dutch could and did enjoy ending the legacies of those dogs that subsisted on the fortunes afforded to them by turning in their fellow man. The occasional bounty, served up by Javier or Arthur, had been to serve a specific purpose – money for camp or easing the tension in the local law – but to dedicate a lifestyle to it? Dishonourable and contrary to the vision he curated for this fallen country.

He was in the process of enjoying a fresh, premium cigar to mark the occasion when Folly skidded to a halt near him, reined in sharply by her rider, Miss Serah Cartwright. The horse shied at the sudden stop, sides heaving from exertion, and her rider, as ever, looked displeased with some aspect of life. This specific aspect had, however, spurred her to action with a low, poorly formed whistle that gained the attention of the small crew tasked with – and successful at – liberating one more to the Cartwright cause. She pointed east, her order for them to move out; she, however, held back and kept glancing to their flank as the others rode ahead. She had her repeater in hand, butt of the gun braced on her thigh as she sought out some target that remained unseen to his eyes.

“Encounter unexpected company?” he inquired. Mildly, for that served up the greatest degree of irritation each time he applied that finer grit against her grain, extracting the reactions he sought to direct her further. Dutch gave credit to her haste in arrival and orders by scanning the path she’d taken to rejoin them upon freeing their new associate, some fellow named Gregory Stone bound for the noose. Subsequently, and quite smoothly, convinced to the benefits of Cartwright employ over death.

There were no clean signs of pursuit but for some trees moving in an unfelt wind. Dutch saw one rider on the road in the distance, bound the westward route. This was the one that Serah raised her rifle towards; she seemed quite ready to shoot that rider, but he reached over and lowered her arm with a touch of his hand, stopped her with a firm shake of his head. “No more gunshots,” he said, a firm command over the habit of suggestions, influences he had plied before this new authority of his. “You’d risk leading the law to our trail with the noise of it?”

Serah glared at him, hands tight on her rifle, and skin of her knuckles alternated from pale to reddened as she flexed her grip. The contest between the risks to both defying him and rousing the law played out in her eyes, compliance the final and sour decision when she wrenched her arm from his grasp. Disgruntled and irate; two traits quite typical of her. It seemed women were less becoming caring in these hard times and more animalistic, if the examples set by Serah and Sadie were anything to measure by.

Obedience, at least, could be instilled, reluctant or not; Dutch had been made lead on the Cartwright recruitment campaign and she need not enjoy that fact to comply. A pleasing distinction after weeks dredging himself from the murky bottom of authority’s pool, bowing to her whims as he coveted the authority secured to and applied by him now. Serah growled an incomprehensible term and slung the rifle back over her shoulder before she kicked Folly into motion; the agitated mare jerked and jumped ahead, on edge from her rider’s ire and eager to escape it.

Dutch responded in a much more sedate manner, guiding Count forward with greater patience, drawing deep of the smoky pleasure the cigar provided. Soothing and flavourful, he exhaled it slowly to linger on its luxury. “Why so cross, my dear?” he asked, smiling bluntly against the sharp edges of her temper. The shortest fuse to an explosive reaction that he’d experienced and often there was no telling what angered her on the given day.

Nothing said in response - hardly the surprise, being as she lacked most of the tongue with which she might form a scathing response. Noises were within her purview and, per Trelawny, she had some few words she’d regained mastery of, but rare did she care to let on exactly what she possessed. True to form, she only snapped her hand out to the side, indicating her lack of desire to hear or say anything more about it.

Remarkable how quickly one both learned and applied these nuances of hers to his own advantage. “Then shall I presume no trouble tails us?” he pressed. A mild imposition to be asking, truly; or so he made it sound with his regretful tone.

The gesture thrown back at him was quite crude, but confirmed he’d no need to be concerned. The fire she displayed had him chuckle, amused at her frustrations.

“Always a conversational delight, Miss Cartwright,” he remarked. The ride to Saint Denis gave him opportunity to explore how much he could sway this angry young lady to his means and with her mood so volatile, he decided to test the waters. “Do tell your brother that I’ve a new job to consider,” he continued, adding something of value to this provocation.

Serah slowed the pace of her mare, the glance back offered showing a frown and an arched brow as his words set their hooks in her interest. Talk of business with her brother brought about the allusion that she might not be included and that was where he meant to sow the doubt, that Samuel opted to exclude her in their key operations.

Dutch had noticed this of the siblings. Each were lethally capable, but they were not also equally informed or trusting of the other’s actions. Preying upon this in small measures rewarded him with strings tied to their motivations, allowed him to make gentle tugs that would align them with the direction that he needed them to take. Samuel made this easier by professing his sister’s skills profusely, but then treating her like some dog to do his bidding. This gated imbalance begged to be plied upon and he had resisted long enough.

“An associate of mine,” he hinted, subtle. “I have news of his whereabouts and should like to utilize our reinforced ranks to make contact with him. The price is the sticking point.”

Her interest waned at the financial aspects, eyes rolled. Give her action and she’d be pleased. Talk and negotiations she’d leave to Samuel, but placed was the idea under her skin, like a splinter to worry at the flesh, that she was not privy to all that was coming.

-

Arthur ain’t ever helped it, this habit of giving lip to them folks in charge; spent too long ground under the bootheel of society, encouraged too much to rise up against it. Safest way, usually, to get his thoughts out without throwing a punch, but not always that safe – this ruminated as he stretched out his jaw, sore from being beat into in Clyde’s vengeful strikes.

Dignity weren’t handed out much to the arrested in this new state of law what Rhodes enjoyed. Arthur reflected that maybe the corruption of before were better, but back then he’d been mostly favoured by the Grays, so they’d not have trussed up his hands and tied him on a lead to Eceni, made him walk all the rest of the way back to town as punishment for his attitude.

Staggered and stilted though it turned out, his chest and lungs throwing his pace to the dogs. Small favours come in that no dust’d kicked up, the dirt of the road still closer to muck after the rains to be stirred up by winds or hooves; saved him worst of the coughing what could’ve triggered by it, though he ain’t full escaped that indignity. Toll enough came drawn at the pace the deputy set, horses kept to a speed he’d call brisk if he’d felt anything close to kind. ‘Half a run’ was what he settled on, seeing as he were feeling sour about the whole mess; it kept him wheezing for air to maintain, which like as not saved him further punishment by thieving the breath needed to remark on how downright kind they was, taking it _easy_ on him like the dullards they all was.

All that meant more effort went to keeping his feet going and his lungs working than he’d put out in weeks and it left him bent half over when they finally stopped in Rhodes, milled outside the sheriff’s office as they talked specifics to what’d happened without bothering to untie or unhitch him. Weren’t pride so much as experience that kept him, unsteady or not, on his feet as his chest burned and he coughed up another mess of bloodied mucus; heard them talking, thought to some dry remarks what’d soothe his irritation, but kept quiet by the fact his mouth’d run too dry to mess overmuch with words.

Clyde weren’t too caring towards his struggle in the way he took some joy in wrestling Arthur up the stairs when they finally pulled the rope from Eceni’s saddle, pushed him hard enough to trip and scrape his bound hands on the wood steps, a splinter biting into the heel of his palm. About then was when Arthur figured, hell, if he were in for a penny, might as well be in for a pound with this idiot; when he got his legs back under him, he muttered an unapologetic sorry, shot the jackass a cocky half-grin, and made sure the hard heel of his boot met Clyde’s shin to leave one hell of a bruise.

Deputy Everett demonstrated a shade too much wisdom about then when he stepped between him and Clyde to stop the murder what rose in his man’s eyes from being committed. “Go on down to the saloon and get a drink, Clyde,” he suggested, firm in his words and the way he grabbed Arthur’s elbow to haul him up the rest of the way.

The lure of intoxication done only a bit to soothe Clyde in the immediate, his face pinched and furious, but seemed there weren’t no contesting the deputy this close to the heart of town. “You just-“ The threat died in his throat, the ideas what rolled around in the man’s head too dull to put proper menace in it and Arthur? Just kept on grinning at him, challenge put by his expression that he knew wouldn’t be met. Truth to that proven when Clyde turned and stalked down towards the Parlour House as ordered to.

“You mind yourself, Mr. Adler,” came Everett’s advice as they crested that last step. “Clyde tripped you well and good, but no one in this town’d question if I called what you done a second assault and doubled your fine.”

“Ain’t stopped most law folk before,” were Arthur’s wry challenge, testing the man’s integrity with it. Time to see how far he might bend the law before it broke on him, but Everett ignored the taunt and pushed the door open. Ruined the fun of it, so he left off that line of talking for a bit, started thinking instead how this’d be the first time in years he’d look forward to being locked down in a cell. Might be able to tame that the bursting hurt of his chest as he caught up to the basic idea of breathing normal, even catch himself a bit of healthy pride over not keeling over dead from the effort.

Everett pushed open the door, then pushed him into the sheriff’s office; Arthur stopped a few paces in, blinking slow to adjust to the diminished light, the cooler air of the inside soothing in his chest after the warmth outdoors. He heard a scuffle and voices further in, squinted some to get a bead on it, the familiar setting what’d been rife with drunken Gray failure now filled with unfamiliar racket.

Turned out to be no more than Sadie, palms laid flat on the sheriff’s desk, all but yelling at the man sat behind it. “My husband ain’t done more than defend himself,” she’d been arguing, straightening up. She kicked the desk, jarring it an inch back without care to the idea that might be taken as threat. Probably took joy in the idea, knowing her. “Your boys roughed him up for it!”

“What my boys done will be in my purview to correct, Mrs. Adler.” Sheriff Thomas sounded real calm and collected as he spoke, the sort of man what chose his battles and chose them well. This one he chose to take on with a placating tone, mind that the words carried an immobility beneath them that said his word would be law in this here town. “If Deputy Everett says its assault, then I will stick with that charge. We don’t let lawmen nor civil folk get beat no more in this town.”

A hand clamped down on Arthur’s shoulder as the door swung shut, the shadowy interior completely robbed of sun’s light. He ain’t fought the push towards the small bank of holding cells, the cant of his grin sardonic at the sour recollections of his own acts in putting a few folk behind these bars back when the Grays ran Rhodes.

“It’s assault,” Everett confirmed as they moved, firm in guiding him. “Broke Clyde’s nose.”

Sheriff allowed himself a soft noise, nearer the huff of an amused man. “Maybe that’ll right the crooked slant after the last time he broke it,” he commented, even toned and expression to match. He relinquished that amusement, replaced it with a slow sigh as he hauled out a ledger book. Meticulous in every motion, he opened it to the latest page and started to jot down notes about the criminal, the crime, and the victim. No real mystery there, just the same sorts of bureaucracy that all law enforcement got bogged down by in proving their wages worth the pretty penny they were. “There you have it, ma’am,” he offered to Sadie, not looking up as he scratched the details onto the pages. “All I can do now is let the rules of law play out.”

Once the jail door’d been drawn open and Arthur stepped in, he felt that odd, prickly sensation of being confined without no real exits. Kept himself from being bothered by it, all too familiar with the rigamarole of incarceration in these sorts of townships to know intimate the squalid conditions and the tired routines. He turned about and held his wrists up, waiting for the deputy to cut away the rope as he gave Everett a calm, calculated sort of smile that started bordering on cold, his patience wearing thin as he saw Sadie’s tension ramping up. Arthur nodded, clipped, in thanks once the bonds fell away and rubbed down the red welts on his wrists, insincere in his appreciation as he walked over to the cot. Sat himself heavily down on it, lungs still aflame, perversely proud that he ain’t fallen like some rock under the bent weight of coughing.

Sat down and leaned forward, Arthur worked on steady breathing for a bit, listened to them talking over by the desk and spent time hoping Sadie ain’t decided to draw her gun and start shooting men to solve this. He had himself a hard time reading her for violence some days, when the targets were anything less guilty than sorts like the raiders and robbers that good as deserved her brutality. When law and civilization came calling, he’d yet to figure when her patience’d run straight out and light the short fuse of her temper.

Sadie scowled at the sheriff and looked around, eyes searching for something to solve the situation against the hard barrier set against her; he knew that expression, of the sort that came when she grasped for options and ideas what’d serve her ends, no matter the means. When her gaze came upon the patchwork of bounties nailed to the wall, they lit up with a spark of determined fire. “How ‘bout a trade?” she said, pointing to the wall. “I bring in one of those, you let Cal go.”

Weird, hearing her use that name again; least she managed it with that irate undertone what said he’d be given grief later for all this, same as she would with his actual name. He’d been getting used to it, more they fell back on the married guise, but still gave him pause and reminded him of that determined widow north of the Hollow who’d lost her own husband of that name.

Weirder still, though hardly perplexing, being that she’d of course grab on the idea that bounty could be a quick errand what’d solve the problem of the day. Weren’t that easy to work in his experience, all about hunting down and convincing the target to give up, otherwise it ended in a long chase and a hogtied bastard spouting lip at you for the miles it took to ride them in. Ate up hours and days with no results, depending on the mark; ain’t no walk in the park and he’d the urge to tell her that, but the sheriff’s attention were up and her ire to match and he weren’t no fool to pester neither of them.

Harmon Thomas turned slow in his chair, looking over the covering of posters. “Them’s the troublemakers ‘round about here,” he mused, standing up. Perused the lot of them slowly, thoughtful as he stepped up and tugged one off its nail. A woman’s face’d been sketched up there, but none of the words about her crimes were clear from where Arthur sat. “You want somethin’ worth your husband, bring this one in,” he added as he held it out towards her.

Sadie grabbed it, read it over. “The Duchess?” she asked, doubtful. “The hell kind of name is that?” The mark’s countenance looked regal, or at least prideful, from what little angle he could see, maybe the source of her name.

Sheriff nodded. “Widow up past Kamassa River crossing, been living up rough all over the county since her husband and sons were killed by the Gray’s over a land dispute. Made a real nuisance of herself over the years. Gets spitting mad any time I send my boys that way. Might be she’ll talk civil with a woman that brings a softer touch and all that.” The man’s shrug pointed to how he figured it logical, though he ain’t no idea how Sadie’s touch for strangers weren’t never gentle nor soft.

“Dead work?” Sadie asked, casual in her measure of the job ahead of her. “I ain’t no good at convincing folk to come quiet.” That had him smirk, nearly snorting, and Arthur leaned forward to force a cough what’d hide that; least she were being honest about her methods and means.

“That I can attest to,” sherrif said, dryly, having just experienced her powers of persuasion and remaining fully un-persuaded. “Alive on this one, but she doesn’t have to be happy about it.”

Wary to the terms, Sadie looked him over. “And you’ll let my husband go if I bring her in,” her last check of the terms.

“The Duchess is a thirty-dollar bounty,” sheriff advised her. “Your husband’ll be free and you’ll both walk away twenty dollars richer.”

Sadie stared down at the poster, thinking it over in that brief way she had to weighing odds and picking a course. “Okay,” she decided, the set of her jaw firm. She went to leave, but stopped by the cell and the irritation writ on her face from dealing with Harmon faded, briefly lit by concern. “You all right in there?”

Arthur waved her off, knowing that for all the better he were handling the exertion, his breath still wheezed in the otherwise quiet room. “I’m fine,” he said. “I’ll be fine here. Ain’t no one gonna bother me, right sheriff?”

An amused huff, distinctly lacking any ring of falsehood, answered him; the nearest to an assurance they’d get.

The shades of belief weren’t strong in her expression, but she left off it with a nod and departed before she could say more. Still looked half as ready to just shoot the sheriff, the deputy, and half the town to break him out, but Sadie had that cryptic way of minding her temper and this time’d be the one when she sealed it all down and kept from bloody murder.


	44. Chapter X: Willowstead - 19: Duchess of Damnation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At least Arthur's new 'do helps escape being identified as THE Arthur Morgan. Sadie goes to find the bounty and have a talk, woman-to-woman, about the benefits of just being captured and handed in to the law's grip. This goes about as well as you can imagine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

Figured that left him to his own devices, confined to the small space as they were. Arthur shrugged up a shoulder and decided to lay back on the cot, rest up some after the haul into town. Weren’t like he had much else to do, with no worth found in pacing a cell that could barely span a few of his strides.

Sheriff walked over and looked down at him where he’d stretched out, pulled his hat off to rest on his chest. “You ain’t worried for her?” he asked. Typical sort of question to bring up, trying to get a measure on the strangers what’d caused problems near his town.

Arthur shook his head, folded his arms up and tucked them behind it to serve as a pillowed rest. “Caroline’s one hell of a strong woman,” he said, honest in everything but the name. “Ain’t no bounty that I figure could stop her from getting the job done.”

“I’d be careful on that pride,” sheriff warned him, walked back over to the tacked-up posters. Tapped two of the yellowed ones with bigger dollar values stretched across the width of the papers. “We got some real foul ones in the area,” he added with a look his way.

The glance over almost cost Arthur his anonymity, but not at the first poster with Dutch’s monikers and face; it were the full pause given when he saw his own mug on the next one, bearded and angry, long hair stretched down ‘round his shoulders the way it’d been when they was last around Rhodes, his pseudonym of Arthur Callahan noted. Settled his expression close to calm, went for mildly curious; knew he ain’t looked like that no more, not with the beard gone and the hair cut close, but knew it better being safe, playing ignorant.

Sheriff watched him for reaction, but lacked that shine of recognition in his eyes what’d say their cover’d been spoiled. Seemed to take his sudden hesitation as due to the dollars listed and the crimes outlined, not the intimate knowledge he had of the criminals. “Them two I’d real love to get in here,” he mused, headed back to his desk. “That Dutch and his gang, they showed up and messed up some local families real bad. His man killed the old sheriff. I heard they ran north and that Morgan fella might’ve been killed. Pity. I wanted to see that bastard hang.”

-

Much as Sadie’d considered it an option for earning keep, running her first bounty as an errand girl fell clear and far from her idea of grand. Put a timeline on it and rules she’d never much cared for? Being jimmied into it because Arthur got smart and pissed off the deputy? All them things made it less enjoyable, compounded by this all being on the heels of Dutch – not once, but twice if that white horse marked his involvement in the crossroads ambush. Put them in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and landed Arthur in the hands of the law he’d spent his life escaping with her chasing down ghosts in a county that’d never welcomed them, safeguarding their precious Rhodes when all she needed to do was safeguard Arthur and his recovery.

Still, could whine all she wanted, bitch all she cared to, or complained until she ran blue in the face, but fact were she’d intent to follow through with what she’d committed to the sheriff and no matter that it come up earlier than she’d expected.

Kamassa River ran east of Rhodes and she matched her direction to it as she rode out of town, aiming to get this done and get back to Willowstead that night, like the whole damn plan’d been from the get-go. Needed that isolation and its sweet taste of anonymity keeping them separate from chance encounters and irate shooters. That it meant she were riding out as the evening started its slow crawl into place, well. Just meant she could use shade and shadows to her advantage once she’d found this Duchess woman.

Thing that kept at her, circling them thoughts and plans on what to do once she found her, came to how this chaotic mess’d stemmed from stepping out from the Stead and, like so many other damn decisions she’d made, it’d been brash and ended badly. Lacked foresight, some might say before she laid them flat with a bullet or a fist, but true all the same. She’d meant the trip to hid Arthur from Pearson, only it served to place Sadie right in Dutch’s sights, and now had Arthur locked up in a jail cell.

What’s done were done and all, but hell if she didn’t like it.

Sadie’d learned best this year that there weren’t no changing the things what’d happened. All they could do were deal with it. So’s she done that best she could, riding east an hour and crossing the river as the sun peeked from the bottom edge of the clouds, teasing the horizon as it sunk further. Sheriff’d said the widow lived rough out this way, so the waning light weren’t quite the deficit it could be. Smoke from campfires and light from flames ought be well and visible from between the trees and up in the sky and she’d play smart and keep her eyes open for that.

Contrary to the little favours it gave, the parts what weren’t great about the hour counted on it being the east side of the crossing where the countryside started sinking into swamps, the squelch of which she could hear as Zeus’s hooves mired and mucked through the soft edges of the roadside. She’d have to ride slow and careful to see all she could and to keep her mare from injury. Kept her eyes alert for signs of camps, life what weren’t run full wild, balanced with keeping them on as stable a trail as the ground offered.

Few flies here and there buzzed at her and Zeus, but most else were quiet about them. Sadie thought, concerned brief, of how it’d been eastward that she’d chased the woman. Eastward that she’d seen the hint of Dutch. They’d best have ridden out south not long after, but it played consideration and caution in her thoughts that they might have headed out this way over Saint Denis. Reason to be careful when she first caught sight of a camp, illuminated by a haphazardly tended fire built bright, bordered on a bonfire conflagration and she’d the idea to question how under control the flames were or when the fire’d been started.

Sadie spied the limp canvas of a tent at the edge of the fire’s light, stood crooked and with a long rent down the side of it. Some few crates here and there, half of them shattered or rotted, but nothing much beyond that. Least it were too small, too worn into the ground to be Dutch’s group – one less concern for her – and too empty to be more than one or two folk what were using it.

Zeus had no real care one way or the other, absent the promise of an apple or beet, so didn’t balk when guided off the road and along the narrow trail that wound about the swampy terrain to the scattered camp. It all lay still, broken by the snap of wood in the fire, bright and warm as she neared and served as proof there ought be someone about to have stoked it that high. Other than the flames, things were quiet and dead; Sadie watched the ground, saw some beaten paths, but with no eye to tracking like Charles had, she’d no measure of the age for each, to know the passage of time since the passage of persons.

She’d a mind to leave it, not waste her time long, then maybe circle around later to see if she’d just scared off the camp’s denizens by her approach. Could even take a more subtle approach on the return, keep from being noticed if that’d been the problem. Turning Zeus about, however, gave her clear sight of damn good reason to hold off: The muzzle of a rusted old rifle pointed at her, held shakily by a woman some fifteen or twenty years ahead of her in age. Hard to measure exactly with the woman’s wild eyes, her hair hanging like muddied bits of tangled string, but lines that dipped into her skin, creases that folded together in the corners of hers eyes, gave the idea, that suggestion of time spent living stretched and gaped between them. Ages of years or actions taken and the weight of them, at least, she could read to some degree and the skittish look in the woman’s eyes radiated nerves and twitches from experience and time.

Back straight and tense, she’d a mind to curse herself at being caught off-guard when she’d known this could be dangerous work. Sadie kept her knees firm about Zeus and raised her hands, palms out, to diminish whatever threat she presented. Ain’t no speed draw on her gun, and despite what Arthur might complain about, she’d an idea of when not to press her luck with lead. Mostly. Having a rifle aimed this close by a woman with wild eyes? Wrong time to push it. “You’d be Duchess,” she wagered with a tired breath huffed out.

The woman’s expression pinched off and she shifted her weight back, firming up her grip, stance, and aim with the rifle. “That what them Grays are calling me now?” she called, hawkish voice guarded and angry.

“That’s the name I got,” she replied with a careful shrug. “Got a poster with your face on it what shows that,” added with a nod down to the side panel of her duster, paper folded up and a corner stuck out of the outside pocket.

Duchess brandished the rifle threateningly as she shuffled closer, rested the muzzle up against Sadie’s side and up against her healed over scar from the stagecoach robbery. Phantom pain of the memory cropped up what she pushed down, watching careful as the woman reached up and snatched the poster from her jacket, stepped back just as quick. Shook it out and laughed, sharp, at the likeness, the text, and the dollar value laid out on it. “Them boys still saying I set all them fires?” Arson and assault were what’d been listed there and that seemed to amuse her.

“Don’t matter to me,” Sadie muttered, quite honest for that. “All I care about’s bringing you in alive.” Also an honest truth. She’d no interest in the politics and policies what separated this woman from lawful living, just wanted the goddamn money to get Arthur out. Being dragged back into the familiar messes left by the Grays and Braithwaites added up to one more goddamn reason to get back to Willowstead and keep there, no more of this chancing fate.

“Sheriff Gray’s got it out for me, girl,” snapped sharply at her, gesturing with the paper. “His cousins were the ones that shot my husband, took my boys from me.”

“Still don’t matter to me,” could be all the truth in the world, but still it fell on ignorant ears. Sadie arched a brow, tried on a different tactic: Bringing this wild woman up to speed on what’d happened while she’d been becoming one with the mire. “You even know that most of them Gray’s are shot and dead now?”

Oh, she heard that one. Duchess, or whatever her name truly were, cocked her head to the side, squinted at her in the low light. “What’d you say?”

Sadie leaned forward, picked her words and put them out clearly. “Them Grays are dead, or mostly so. Them that aren’t turned tail and run.” She lowered her arms slowly, held a hand out for the poster to be returned to her so they could wrap this business up.

Duchess approached with a skittish sideways crawl, wary. “Then why’s you come out here, looking for me with this damn thing?” asked, shaking it at her.

“Dead Grays ain’t mean the new sheriff is gonna let them old bounties go dry,” Sadie remarked. Seemed a stretch of reason might come up here, that they could talk this out. “His name’s Thomas or some sort and he ain’t no Gray and ain’t no Braithwaite. My guess’d be he wants to see what it is you done or not done before getting the judge’s call on it.” Spark of reason or not, her patience ran thin on applying logic and persuasion. “You going to come on in or are we gonna be at odds on it?” Mind that with the rifle still pointed close enough her way, she held off making any fast or firm moves just yet.

That poster fluttered with angry energy, the hand holding to it gesticulating wildly. “I done _none_ of these things, girl!” she ranted, words cooped up and kept to spout whenever someone challenged her on it, begging to be spat out at this one-woman audienc. “Maybe shot some Grays and I burned out that one house with ‘em in it and-“

Sadie’d leaned forward with a frown to grab back the poster and stop its distracted waving about when Duchess struck, wide gestures a façade to move close, grab her arm and pull hard to the side. Balance thrown off, she let out a yell as she were dragged out of the saddle by woman, inertia, and gravity in a bastard trio of force. Hit the muddy ground hard with her left shoulder, yell turned shout with angry pain, loud and sudden, in the way her neck bent and her muscles locked. She rolled away once and twice, and came to rest on her back, winded, as Duchess stepped up, rifle sighted neat and tidy at her head.

Cold determination in the woman’s eyes made it clear that making it out alive weren’t on the menu set for Sadie. “No hard feelings, girlie,” the woman said, squeezing the trigger.

Damnit.

Ain’t thought it through, ain’t done more than move towards the goal of getting Arthur out and now she’d be dead in the goddamned bayou over those fucking Grays and weren’t it all just the worst way to face one’s final moment. Sadie grimaced and waited for the lead bite tear into her.

Nothing.

Duchess tried again, but the trigger’d jammed with dirt and rust from months or years of misuse. The fluke luck of it would only work for a minute or two, so Sadie pushed down her surprise and moved quick before it the grit could loosen. She kicked out, foot connected to the woman’s leg, and pushed hard to knock her off balance. She grabbed the barrel of the rifle and shoved it aside in the same action, snarling her frustration, that lingering anxious adrenaline come from escaping one more bullet what’d had her name on it. The woman went down on her back with loud burst of air pushed out of her lungs and Sadie pulled the gun out of her grasp as she got her own feet beneath her. Rusted and useless for more than a bludgeon, she threw it aside and felt the cruel satisfaction of hearing it splash and sink into the cold, deep swamp waters.

Sadie’s neck and shoulders were burning from the fall and her short temper ran out of fuse at the indignation of this situation. Wiped mud off her cheek savagely and drew her revolver, cocked the hammer back. Tempted. Very tempted and had to reason it out to herself; could shoot her, maybe in the leg. Maybe in the head. Half a bounty, if she got paid for it, would still sort this out. Or, maybe... Go back to Rhodes and shoot the sheriff and- Hell. Break Arthur out of jail? Shoot up all of Rhodes and make sure Dutch’d hear tell of it by the mess and goddamnit things were getting too complicated for it to be solved with a trigger pull and so she stayed her finger with effort.

Temptation did not win out, sorely though it pulsed through her with tantalizing ideas of bloodshed to satisfy her rage; instead she kicked the woman’s foot to make sure she and her revolver had her full attention. By the wide, wild eyes focused on the barrel of her clean and functioning gun, she clear did. “We’s at odds on it then,” she decided. “So how about you put your hands some place nice and clear and I’ll not go shooting you dead on the spot. Deal?”

“Dead won’t pay,” Duchess protested, taking her turn to be indignant and showing them first fleeting bits of panic that she might be in real danger here. She done and moved though, exaggerated movements, as she’d been told to and slow as all get out.

“I really don’t care at this point,” Sadie said flatly, dead serious. Shooting up Rhodes in an old-fashioned jailbreak sounded better and better far as she’d become concerned; it involved less mud and bruising and indignity and this was why she preferred bullets over banter. She whistled to get Zeus a bit closer, grabbing her looped rope off the saddle and ready to finish this damn mess up.

The woman fussed and sussed, but got trussed up without any literal more mudslinging; complained loudly all the while, but weren’t no riders passing by that could hear or care about it. The hour nearer to dark and the area close to the silent terrors talked about as the Night Folk were more like to have them ride past even if they did catch on to there being a struggle an the campsite.

Sadie hauled Duchess up across the horse’s rump, then mounted up and raised her hand up with a backwards glance, a threatening gesture that’d deliver a hit if trouble cropped up. “You want to be wise,” she warned, “and you ain’t gonna talk to me the rest of the way to town.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Never will there be words enough to express my gratitude for y'all being part of my writing journey here on AO3. This week marks about the halfway point, maybe a little less, for Sinful Mercy. There are still so many, many chapters left to go and I'm looking forward to sharing it with you.
> 
> Got me some work done on the concluding action in the penned draft, but I've been stalled and struggling a bit with it. That all is starting to sort out and smooth out.
> 
> In other news, I made a younger Arthur Morgan character in Red Dead Online and have started causing a ruckus with a friend that made a younger John Marston. It's been full on chaos and I love it.
> 
> iuall and stay safe!
> 
> \- Kichi @[KichiWhy](https://twitter.com/KichiWhy) (Twitter)


	45. Chapter X: Willowstead - 20: Earned and Kept

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With the bounty brought in and paid, Arthur's turned out free and Sadie's done with her first taste at being the hunter. Next time, she'll be apt to accept the lower cut and just kill the bastard over being dragged through the literal dirt again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

The moon rose high, light of it barely breaching the darkness of the cell even as the clouds cleared in the sky; it woke Arthur now and again from his indulgent dozing as he waited out his time in the jail, same as he’d done for hours and days over his long years of breaking the law. Learned an outlaw patience it did, biding his time this way; different, though, it felt from them past instances when he’d that surety of Dutch coming or sending someone to get him out if he ain’t posted his fine by nightfall. After Guarma’s sudden slide from sanity, then John arrested and lined up to hang without Dutch lifting his head long enough to piece together a plan, claiming how it ain’t been time and how it needed to be right? That they needed to have faith? Took that surety and tore deep into it, left him asking himself whether the man had his back no more. Stole from that faith, once ocean-deep, until it weren’t there no more.

But, that’d been Dutch and that’d been at the end.

This here, riding with Sadie? None of them thoughts or hesitancies cropped up, not no more; the now ran situation different, more equitable even if she hadn’t made it clearer than crystal waters that she weren’t leaving him to rot nowhere, not in death or jail. Take her nature without that vehemence and he’d proof witnessed with his own eyes that not even Sisika could keep her from getting someone out and safe. This jail’d be nothing to that, mind that he figured it safer for them both to leave off the bloody jailbreak of Sisika and have him serve the time. Weren’t like they had the noose looped about his neck for what he done, just a fine against hard labour and what’d that do but strengthen him up again?

The other factor that had him indulge in this confinement related direct to the pains of his breathing. The longer he stayed there, kept waiting and patient, the less pronounced the burn of his chest became, the embers of the sickness banked again until the next time he fouled up or run his mouth at the expense of his lungs. The exertion of being made to haul himself to Rhode had left him sore with each breath, but at least he had them breaths coming and that served a speck of hope that he’d come closer to beating back the infection than being beaten back by it. Never full free of it, but some sense of him being alive more than the given proof that breathing alone provided. Month and more ago and he’d have been laid flat out or dead in a grave by the same, not just tired to exhaustion and that had to mean something.

Midnight neared when the sharp whistle and shout sounded out at the front step served to wake him fully, jarring him from the sedate circuit he’d let his thoughts trail through. Alerted by it, Arthur pushed himself to sitting on the cell cot as Deputy Everett warily rose from behind the desk, left in charge in the wake of the sheriff’s end of day.

Deputy wandered towards the door, but neither of them had long to wait or wonder about the caller; Sadie pushed the door open with nearer a kick to it, her mood fouler than the irate mess she’d departed with earlier. She stomped in and ain’t stopped to knock the muddy swamp filth from her boots before she pointed at Everett and gestured behind her. “Get that potato sack of a woman off my horse,” she ordered the deputy, clear and done with the task she’d set out to do – both in the literal and the metaphorical senses.

Trust Sadie to twist how a usual bounty turn-in went to suit her mood, soured and frigid towards protocol in favour of getting the damn task done and freeing them both to their original business of getting back to Willowstead. A usual bounty hunter’d carry the mark in, drop them off, but she ain’t ever gone for being the usual sort. Nor did Sadie look it, half of her side muddied, hair dishevelled and dark with muck. That Duchess woman’d put up something of a tussle, then, and weren’t clear how decisive her victory’d turned out by the mess she’d landed in. The end, all told, said that Sadie’d clearly won, but her eyes were bright with determination what said it’d been earned, not granted.

Before she tore into the deputy and made things worse with her temper, he spoke up to distract her; ain’t no mind to him if she yelled at Everett, seeing how he’d let Clyde and them beat him good, but he wanted out of here, not have her company behind bars. “The hell kind of cat dragged you through the door?” Arthur asked; aimed for jest there, good humour to offset the murderous airs that clouded her space.

That snapped her gaze his way. “You!” Sadie pointed at him and stalked over to the cell, full attention set on his condition and the half of a smile he’d kept on even as her focus narrowed to him. He could see the irritation writ in the fire of her eyes, but weren’t turned on him, just a peripheral burn to be near. “You owe me, Mr. Adler,” she said, loud enough for Everett to catch as he carried in a trussed-up woman, more swamp detritus than human.

“Of course, Mrs. Adler.” Arthur raised his hands, swift and smart in surrender of the point because he figured he’d measured and weighed himself trouble enough without pushing her on the intricacies of how they’d only been there to be caught because she’d insisted on going to Saint Denis. All her indignation, seeing as she’d come in and looked unharmed, did amuse him some and he couldn’t help but find the rest of that smile he’d near lost. He had troubles aplenty when running bounties and could understand frustrations to no small degree, no matter how fresh the experience was for her.

“And let my goddamn husband go,” she added as the deputy moved past to deposit this Duchess mark in the cell opposite his, given a grunted agreement as he hauled.

Ten minutes later found them twenty dollars richer after he forged a quick Callahan Adler signature for the sheriff’s ledger to prove his fine paid. That freed them both from the law again and the deputy reunited Arthur with his new guns and kit, not to mention a mildly irate Eceni in search of oatcakes for being left hitched alone for hours.

They were leading their horses as they walked down the main stretch of Rhodes when he broached the silence between them. “What next?” he asked once they were out of earshot of the good deputy.

No pressing need on a firm call, with no lawmen hunting them Adlers. Low on money that they were, but not on the run and that left them leeway on what they could or ought do. This type of freedom he’d less familiarity with. Freeing that it were, sure, but of a sort where, after all she’d done to get him out of the cell, he’d the mind to ensure they took the next step together. Odd that it felt, being one making the calls what might impact the pair of them.

Sadie had her free hand up, rubbing at some sore points of her neck and shoulder, looking drained and not of a planning mood. “We got twenty dollars,” she muttered, annoyed it weren’t more, “and it’s midnight.” The sharp letting of her breath passed as a sigh, a wince as the action kinked up something in her neck. “Let’s rent a damn room, get something to eat, and ride out in the morning.”

“Fine by me.” Honest-to-goodness truth, that. It’d been a long ride from Saint Denis, a long walk from the crossroads, and a long wait at the jail what didn’t serve up no restorative energy. Add in that shooting and the beating and he felt ready to turn-in about as much as she looked.

That’d be how they wound up at the Parlour House, their horses hitched outside, room at the back rented to the Adlers with food ordered to be left there for them, and, in a spat of annoyance, Sadie spent some extra monies on a bath up on the second floor to divest herself from the muck she’d been coated in.

Arthur didn’t much like the number of folk stuffed to the brim in the saloon for the hour and - mindful that she might murder any what crossed her, grabbed at her, or made lewd comments to her on the path two and from the bath - he followed her up the stairs and waited outside the private room, leaned up on the wall outside the door, hat tipped down and hands hooked, relaxed, in his belt as he kept a profile on the mood of the room.

Majority of folk were content to pay attention to their liquor and the blackjack table over him holding up the wall, so it all went relatively quiet for a time. Then one of the ladies what worked the saloon, lovely and seductive in every intended way, made her way up the spiral staircase to the second floor, pausing to murmur pleasing phrases and leave soothing touches along the patrons of the establishment as she made her way towards the bathing room.

Arthur leaned away from the wall and intercepted her with a quick step into her path; he dipped his hat politely, aimed for the courteous sort of greeting. “That’s my wife in there, ma’am,” he said, apologetic for intervening to what’d likely be her offering a service. “She’s had a day, don’t think she’ll be much wanting to be bothered.”

Shaded dark by soot, her eyebrow arched up and she looked him over, licking her lips. “Oh, I was just come to see if she’d like some help in there, sugar,” and the words dripped like sweet honey from her mouth, practiced and assured. The way she smiled had that mildly predatory air of a woman well aware of her appeal and the manner in which she crossed her arms below her chest, pushing up that small measure to enhance her assets, spoke to a skill what’d have any hot-blooded sort finding it difficult to refuse. He did his level best not to stare, eyes looking only so low as the exposed line of her clavicle. “You know,” she added, voice brightening with an idea, “I don’t mind helping _both_ you and your lady in getting comfortable, honey. Only costs a bit more.”

The intimation and inclination were clear and briefly vivid did his mind picture it before he coughed, shook his head and kept it ducked, respectful and polite even as his ears heated up. “Generous of you, ma’am,” he afforded. “But, ah. You’d get a better return with one of them boys at the blackjack table.”

A playful pout and a pat of his shoulder served her response to that. “If you say so, cowboy,” she said, light and teasing. “But you call out if either of you change your mind,” her parting offer before she sashayed her way past, eyes already on the tallest towers of chips, the surest of men at the table meant to be next her mark.

“Arthur?”

Set and ready to resume his unofficial post, Arthur paused when he heard the muffled calling of his name through the door. He approached it over holding up the wall again, positioned himself to block any straying eyes, and cracked the door open an inch; couldn’t see much of anything within, but could feel the humidity of the steam roll over him. “You need something?”

“Who was you talking with?” Voice came up tense, like Sadie expected trouble still. Always. Generally speaking, it were a sound bet with them, especially the way her temper flared up or his luck bore down.

“One of them local girls,” he said, dismissing the worry of it. “Came to check on how you was doing.”

Sadie allowed herself a slow chuckle. “Sorely,” she admitted. He heard the slosh of water as she shifted in the tub. “Weren’t offering them ‘deluxe’ services that girl in Van Horn talked about?”

Arthur’d come away with little recollection of the day and some spent at that broken down trading post, but he could clear recall a time or two that he’d stopped there before and a pretty young thing by the name of Elizabeth had helped him out. “Weren’t just that,” he said with a wry chuckle. “This here lady offered a two-person special.”

“And you sent her off?” The sharp rise in her tone, teasing and testing him, gave him no real pause.

“I ain’t much good at sharing,” he replied easily. About the only romantic part of him seemed his monogamy. It’d also led to some fair stretches of celibacy them months he’d spent courting Mary’s affections. Complicated rules what society of her level had for such things meant no extra activities and he’d done his level best in respecting that.

Silence from within, the words soaking in. “Then don’t,” she said. Thought he detected some note of satisfaction or contentment with what he’d said, the easy and certain way he’d said it. No compunction nor hesitation in saying he’d be fine sticking solely with her for long as she allowed it.

There’d been a moment there. A bated breath where some part of them both thought this could be when the casual complexities between them stretched to something too serious, that one of them might call a bluff on them as a pair. Then it were gone, nothing much changed but the admission that what it were stayed between them, right then. Odd relief there, like it’d come closer to making sense in his heart, even if his head kept off admitting to more than the attraction he felt and explored with her.

That break in the step of them passed, the breath he’d not quite realised he’d held released, when he heard her fingers drumming along the metal edges of the tub. “Since you sent her off,” Sadie started up, “What’ll it cost to get your deluxe services, Mr. Adler?”

Arthur shook his head at her antics here, but pushed the door wide enough to step inside before he closed it. He leaned back against it and looked over to her, sunk deep in the tub with her eyes closed, and felt the fondness of a smile pull at him. Suds were still thick in her hair, a pitcher of clean water wafting its own hints of steam set on the stool next to her, but she ain’t done too much to clean up the rest. “Y’seem to be doing alright,” he commented.

Sadie opened an eye, looking him over brief before she closed it again, wrist twisted to beckon him closer, smiling dryly. “Don’t mean I’d pass up your assistance, sir,” she told him archly. She started to slowly roll back her shoulder, but stopped part of the way through, wincing in pain.

Stepped from the door fast, he did, crouched down next to her within the moment; concern bit at him, that she’d been hurt out there, and he gently brushed the damp locks of her hair aside from where it rested over her shoulder and against her neck. The skin weren’t broken there, but he saw the red of irritation, the swelling, and underneath it the early purple hints of bruising. “What happened here?”

“That damn woman,” she muttered, sharp and vicious with those few words. Sadie pressed her hand over it, tried to stretch her neck to the side, but stopped with a grimace. “Pulled me off Zeus and damn near broke my neck,” she muttered.

Arthur lifted her hand off, letting it slide back into the water as he probed carefully along the side of her neck, tried to avoid anything that made her intake of breath too quick, too pained. “And you never shot her?” asked with disbelief more than any genuine question.

“I was real tempted,” she warned. “Still am. Hurt like the dickens.” Her quick breath in stifled the groan of ache, caught it in her chest where it couldn’t take root, but he felt the hitch of tension it triggered. “Still does,” her reluctant admission.

No thought put to it before he stripped off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, then Arthur pulled off his hat to set it aside. “Let me,” he said, voice gruff. He dipped his hands into the hot, soapy water to warm them, then started to carefully wipe away the swamp’s grime from her skin, rubbing careful circles around the inflamed knots of muscle. Worked it into a slow, careful massage of her neck and shoulders that had her starting to relax under his touch, resting her head forward as the ache started to ease.

“That helps,” she murmured, closing her eyes and touching her chin to her chest.

Longer he worked at it, the clearer it became that this’d been direct result of his lack of control around the law folk. He’d been smug at them afterwards, kicking up his boots to wait on the solution, but this was an old habit. When there’d been a dozen or more of the gang to help out, it weren’t more than some give or take for each of them to get another out of the bin. Arthur’d been the one to take on most of the risks, sure, but they all done their part. With it being two of them now, that safety net’d lost most of its threads and made it harder on them all when something slipped. Things she did hit him direct and things he done came back at her the same. This tired ache’d not have been an issue if it weren’t for his temper firing off and he felt the regret of it. “Sorry ‘bout this,” he said, quieter.

“Don’t,” she said. Quick and firm as she held up a hand to stop him from protesting. “Don’t be sorry. I ain’t sorry about it, or any of this.” A gesture made towards him, then to herself. “And I ain’t about to change how I live, so I ain’t going to tell you to. ‘Sides, made a mistake in how I went to take her in and ain’t no fault of yours that I made the wrong call.”

His thumbs traced down along the back of her neck, feeling bits of bone shifting closer to where they was supposed to as her muscles relaxed, her words working the same at the tense knot if his self blame. “That’s fair,” he agreed slowly. World had changed, dumped them all off the side, and he kept thinking he needed to be some sort of other person to make it work. Completely different for the sake of surviving, a stranger to who he’d been. Yet here were Sadie, rough and wild, but choosing to live on in a world what had no space for a widow’d, childless woman. She’d kept strong, become stronger and resolute, and he started to realize that it’d been her circumstances what changed, but she made it change again to suit her. Goddamn wisdom all through her, despite the brash actions and reckless abandon what he complained to time and again.

-

Samuel tapped his fingers on the red leather binding of the ledger, thoughtful. Calculations of the risk against the temptation of the reward would be going through his easily tantalized mind. Laid out was his gilded net, set to entangle the more profiteering half of the Cartwrights, and close had his prey stepped to the snaring.

“Consider the proposal,” Dutch encouraged, calm and subtle. He leaned back in the chair, plush and padded, opposite the ornate desk and briefly let his gaze touch on the ledger, Trelawny’s wise woven into his plans to the black and red ledgers being key.

“The profit is clear,” Samuel mused. “Your benefit in this, less so.” A whisper of suspicion, an eye seeking trickery as he looked Dutch over.

“Loyalty is everything that separates man from the animal,” he replied smoothly. “I have long held to that, as did those that stood with me. I propose that there is no cost too high for me to pay in preserving it.”

“Why, if loyalty is paramount, were you then separated from them to begin?” Samuel started to flip through the ledger, humming thoughtfully to himself.

Dutch noted each page from his position, names with lists of numbers in columns. Some owing to the Cartwrights, like Mr. McIntosh, and others even or with equity. “Separation of location is not separation of purpose,” he offered the challenge, smiling with confidence over arrogance. He folded his hands together, cupped them over his bent knee. “Those that are with me wait only to be called back, to resume the unified front.”

A specific page paused upon, his own name scratched in at the top; a finger tapped down on the column, some two, three thousand dollars totaled his value to the Cartwrights thus far, but why stop there when he could have much more. A take to dwarf any Confederate gold or Cornwall bonds. “This Mr. Williamson? He did poorly at waiting, to have been arrested so soon.”

“Bill lacks only in sense, not devotion.” Banter of a meaningless sort meant to unseat his confidence and falling short of its intent. Dutch knew, of all that had followed him, Bill’s loyalty the most immutable; it was a surety that this man, so vested in values and dollars, could never comprehend.

“Understand, Mr. van der Linde.” Samuel clasped his hands together and rested them on the open ledger. “Your current position in my organization is quite advantageous to the both of us. You enjoy the splendor of rich living and I gain the reliability of devoted recruits. Providing you with the backbone of your former gang lessens the bond between us.” Truth, there, for Dutch here sought to sever the servitude of his circumstances without making wise the Cartwrights to the aims. “What do you offer to offset that trust?”

Subservience here the veneration sought, but he did not play further to that. Dutch simply smiled. “Faith, Samuel,” he said confidently. “You must have faith. One or two of my men are nothing to threaten you.” Calmly delivered were each of his words, selected with the care to effect a return; Samuel was not like his sister, who could be overwhelmed by words. No, he weighed and measured them, tested their efficacy before being bought into them. “ _But_ , by all means: Increase your commission if you need financial impetus. Know that my effectiveness relies directly on the degrees of freedom afforded to my methods. The greater that freedom, the more I can fulfil my role as a true American and amass without a master, just as you have _wisely_ ,” a pause, to allow that veiled praise to sink in, “done.

“And I would no longer require Miss Cartwright’s security,” he added this, meant to play benefit while, in truth, it was both offer and request to be removed from her constant presence. “Thereby freeing her to other tasks and profits that would serve you.”

This point did not incite the relief one would expect. For not the first time did Dutch lean to and upon the conclusion that his involvement in these Cartwright enterprises served to keep Serah out of Samuel’s way of late, as much as she ensured that Dutch maintained a certain priority for the Cartwrights’ wellbeing. This cleft between the finances and the fury of the family gave weakness to the bloated enterprise that he leaned upon.

Samuel considered his options, both known and easily read in his eyes, a decision made moments later. “To the contrary,” he remarked. “My sister will assist you in this and, rather than increasing the commission I take from your contributions to this family, I ask that you assist her as well in a challenging task.”

Dutch paused, inclined his head to show a willingness to consider some concession if it would provide the ends to justify the means. “Name the task that your indefatigable sister has been stymied by and I will do my best.”

Ledger pages shifted and ended on what appeared, in the reverse view he had, to be McIntosh’s accounting once again. “There was a dent made in our capital two months ago; shortly before we began our own profitable association,” Samuel explained. He turned the ledger; for the first time allowing Dutch to freely read a page without the use of subterfuge. “Two thousand dollars, claimed to be lost in transit. Serah has been pursuing it and has leads, but... Its disappearance has caused friction in the ranks that no organization benefits from, this... being seen as easily stolen from. Assist her in recovering that, she will assist you in turnl. And you will be given a ten percent finder’s fee on recovery of the full amount.”

Dutch pulled the ledger closer, though the man kept it pinned to the table with his spindly fingers. Notes of a stagecoach run from Van Horn Trading Post, carrying the money under the guise of transporting a- “Interesting situation,” he noted, reading the few notes. ‘Adler, S.’ The name of the passenger matched the widowed woman; she would have been in the area then, with the Hollow on its precipice of collapse. Quite possible to have been here, but this other name listed; husband? He had died, though maybe this served some sign of other, less wanted survivors of the Pinkerton ambush and its related hells that had throw in their lot with her.

Sadie Adler, proven not to have ‘passed through’ as she had claimed in Saint Denis, now associated with the unwanted liberation of funds from the Cartwrights. He recalled, also, seeing Pearson in Rhodes; her plus one in the escape? He would have to pay him a visit, see what came of a few words, friendly or less so, and that made his next words easy to dole out.

“We have a deal, Mr. Cartwright.”

Abrupt and sure, he smiled widely at this opportunity to perhaps clarify and correct a few lingering threads before he became fully re-established as a very formidable force to be reckoned with.

-

Ten dollars remained from Duchess’s bounty once they had slept, eaten, and left Rhodes come late morning the following day. Sadie kept it folded in the hideaway pouch at the bottom of her saddlebags, the start of something to last them beyond their current needs. They’d made it back to Willowstead and that meant no requirement to draw from it, their supplies enough to serve them through the thaw’s up north, and until then she’d keep the monies hidden away.

Beyond that, they fell into the easy relief of being back and had holed up nearer a week now without straying further than the warren for fresh rabbit or a field to find tender, young wild carrots to sweeten the stew. Both of them craved the isolation it provided, wary of and away from the too many familiar faces seen and meant to be avoided.

Some days, it felt that getting away from the intersected paths of their past could never happen, but here at the Stead, she could forget that for a spell. They couldn’t stay forever, but as the gang had in each new camp, they could enjoy their solitude and safety as best it offered. Ignorant, however, they were determined to avoid being; mindful of that limited time here in Lemoyne and of her unwanted encounter with Dutch, they’d started talking to options, safehouses what might bear fruit if they got separated or something untoward happened. Clemens Point they identified only as a short-term option, some place to hold for a few hours if chaos broke loose, a day at most, but they needed something stronger, longer-term than that and had been talking some hours on options.

“There’s a place up at O’Creagh’s Run,” Arthur started on that night, the pair of them splitting a bottle of rum as the evening retired the sun and scattered the blanket of stars into the sky in its place. “There’s a homestead on the waterfront,” he explained, slowing as his thoughts run to what he knew about it and what he meant to share. “All goes to hell, head that way.”

“Dutch don’t know about it?” she asked, pouring them each a tin cup of the rum. Nothing fancy for serving, but that suited them both being not of the fancy sort. Tin cans and fancy glasses ain’t changed the flavour nor the kick of the alcohol, so why bother?

“Ain’t no one know,” he remarked, pulling the refilled cup towards him, tilting it back and forth in his grasp.

Sadie watched him, sat back in his chair and lost in some thoughts he seemed closed off from sharing. Oddly melancholic, a contrast to when she’d seen him be rowdy and smiling whenever the drink ran freely in camp; seemed this place he referred to meant something fierce to him, or so she’d learned of h is tells. Hard to believe it’d two months gone since the Hollow, of that a month and change spent at Willowstead and them being, well. Closer. Seemed fast that the time went to memories, but with it, she’d learned more of Arthur, gained better insights on the way he was. Like this quiet? Ain’t the normal. This were something he fell into on a serious note, the sort signalling there were thoughts bothering him. “What?”

Arthur looked over at her, blinked once or twice as her question fetched him back to the here, the now. Looked at her long, no words readied to refute her concern, then gave up on that with a sigh. “Remember Buell?”

The golden-shaded horse he’d ridden in on one day at the Hollow, sharp in _not_ explaining to none of them how it was he acquired him. Most assumed him stolen, like most of the horses that’d ended up used by the gang, and she’d been one to believe it. “Yeah. Ornery horse,” she noted. “Didn’t much listen to no one.”

Small laugh to that, dry and choked as he cut it short. “This place I’m talkin’ ‘bout is where his owner lived,” he said, quieter. “Old, ornery man, like the damn horse. Hunted some with him, talked some.” He shrugged up a shoulder, tense; definitely more to it than he was letting on, but he kept talking through it without her prompting more. “After Hosea died, this guy? I don’t know. He were easy to talk to about things. Told me about his life in the war. Told him about outlaw living and stealing. We ain’t ever judged each other about it neither. Felt right, talking with him about them things.”

An insight, brief, under the hard grit at the surface and she stole it, kept it close even as she asked the question her mind guessed the answer to: “What happened to him?”

“Died.” Flatly said, like that fate were impossible to avoid ‘round Arthur Morgan. “Gored during a boar hunt and I weren’t there to stop it.” The clouding of his features caught her, filled with more guilt than just one instance feeding it. “Never blamed myself,” said to appease himself, maybe, but done poorly as he chased it with the rum to blur the bitter memory. “Only wondered if he met that fate ‘cause of my luck some days.” He reached for the bottle to pour another. “Seems always that anything good I got’s meant to die along the way. Mostly come to terms with that.”

This sentiment she’d some understanding of. Blissful ignorance had been the challenges before Colm’s boys darkened her door. Since then, most things good done slipped away from her, no matter how she fought for it. Even some what’d left because it had to, like with John, Abigail, and Jack; safest away from her, away from anything with ties to their past if they was to make themselves a future. But Sadie fought still to keep what she wanted, proof in the pudding of Arthur sitting here with her.

“Some of it ain’t gone bad,” she countered, knocking back the contents of her cup. She hissed at the fire of it in her chest and thumped the mug back down on the table. “I ain’t dead. You ain’t dead. We,” and her pause here emphatic to _them_ , “ain’t dead. Maybe luck’s gone soft on you.”

A grim chuckle returned her way, the sort built on jaded experience. “Luck must’ve left me for dead up at the Hollow,” came his sarcasm, self-effacing as ever.

“Then we make sure it don’t ever catch on,” she proposed with a sly grin. “Long as it think you died, it can’t give you bad fortune.” All in line with what they done so far, if she ignored her own poor luck to run into Pearson and Dutch in such close proximity. Strauss, at least, had been on his way out, and running into John might’ve landed her in a troubled stretch, but it’d been more good than bad.

Arthur looked at her a bit odd, like he couldn’t quite gather or grasp at her certainty in these things. Them being only half through the bottle weren’t enough to laugh it off, shake his head, nor dismiss it. “There any problem you can’t solve by charging headlong at it?” he asked.

“Yeah.” That came easy, her shoulders rolled back in a shrug as she pointed quick his way. “You.”

“Me.”

“You.”

“And?”

Clear that he ain’t understood what she meant by that and so she stole the bottle from his grasp, poured herself a cup to keep blurring the edge of sense and time. “Spent most of my time _not_ running headlong at you,” she said with a gesture his way. Rum sloshed over the rim of her cup, her motions getting sloppy the more they drank. “Ain’t chased you on purpose. Proof I don’t do everything as bull-headed as you claim.” This she added with an amused huff before she took a sip of the rum, turned it into a deep drink.

Arthur snorted, his laughter loud and clear. “You stole me off the devil’s doorstep and refused to let me die,” he pointed out. “How’s that not being bull-headed and not chasing after?”

Sadie smiled knowingly and stood, unsteady on her feet as the rum swayed her center of balance. “It were before that, Arthur,” she went on saying, walking over to the fur-layered chairs by the fire, driven to its warmth by the encroaching coolness of the night air. A wave of her hand back his way, or near his way, served no real purpose, but felt good to be moving after an hour and some sitting. “You was off at sea, after the Saint Denis job fell out. And all’s I could think were that I needed to get all them that survived safe. That it’d ruin you if we was dead or gone.” She shrugged up her shoulder and dropped into the chair, pulled a leg up to rest her foot on the seat. “That’s about when I figured you meant more than... I don’t know. Friend, I suppose. I only did nothing on it. No point. You was gone, then you was off to help Mary, then-“ Another gesture, vague, towards the truth that he’d not stopped after Guarma. Ain’t had time nor sense to, busy with trying to slow Dutch’s mental demise, the fracturing of his family, the running and the messes that kept coming up at every corner.

Her speaking subsided a moment, a quiet one as she looked over the flames, curled her arm around her bent knee. “’Sides,” she added, softer. “Weren’t sure I was past Jake. Still hurt, waking up alone all the time.” Sadie let the words trail off, drank the dredges from her cup.

“Ain’t no rules on how you’s supposed to move on,” Arthur spoke up, careful on this raw topic. “Took me and Mary years and we was both alive to do it.” Maybe that was why, in the end. Why it took so damn long, with two parties living and breathing to stretch it out, when her own beloved spend the months cold and dead. Maybe that’d been why she could let herself want for Arthur, only had to work through her troubles on it, ply her memories of Jake to being fine with what she’d set herself to have after she’d served up vengeance.

“I don’t like waiting,” she said, clipped off words that kept the doubtful hurt from sneaking in. Truth, bitter or not, was easier to utter than any insights to what she’d done and felt in dealing with Jake’s death. “Patience ain’t my thing.”

This statement turned out worth the laughter it caused, amusement at the defiant honesty of it. Arthur shook his head when it subsided and stood, grabbing the bottle. Carried it over as he walked across the cabin, passed it to her hand over her shoulder before he dropped into the other chair, legs splayed lazily towards the fireplace. “Never would’ve guessed,” his dry comment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Evening, y'all!
> 
> Been considering this for a while and have decided to test out a single chapter update per week, with at least five thousand words per chapter. Pushing to have two chapters out, while never an expectation from anyone but myself, has been risking another bout of burnout. The amount of content will be a little bit less (by about 2k words/week), but will allow me to start working through my other active fics and backlogged concepts, in addition to having time to exist in more than the "Kichi's writing again, big surprise" sphere.
> 
> What'll this mean for me? When I'm typing up the chapter, I'll just power through typing until I've added five thousand words to the document! Then I'll go back and start the edit, which should add 1-2k words by the time I'm done (based on prior history).
> 
> What'll this mean for you? Clicking on the latest chapter number will load you into the most recent full update, no more loading in and having to go back a chapter to "catch up" on the stuff that I literally just posted.
> 
> For more details on the thoughts and process here, check out the [Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/KichiWhy/status/1358575201320005634) where I rambled. Bonus content: It has a list of almost all my current active and backlogged fics, but not the list of requests and ideas I have saved in a file for one-shots.
> 
> As always, iluall and be safe!
> 
> \- Kichi @[KichiWhy](https://twitter.com/KichiWhy) (Twitter)
> 
> P.S. Smut next week. 8D


	46. Chapter X: Willowstead - 21: Honest Declarations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arthur finds his courage at the bottom of the bottle and Sadie finds her way of deflecting that until later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

Sadie took a long pull from the bottle and made a fine sight of it with her head tilted back, neck smooth and inviting eyes to follow the line of it. She paused when she noticed Arthur’s interest, then tipped the bottle forward the break the seal against her mouth. A brief few seconds of consideration were given before she ran her tongue quick along the rim of it with her lips quirked to a smile, eyes locked on his face. Near choked on the laugh that caught up when his face took on a reddened hue and he averted his eyes, stood up hastily from the chair.

That sight severed from him any grasp of what they’d been on about, directed every last ounce of thought and imagination to finding ways to explore what he’d seen. Reservations about propriety dulled by the alcohol, Arthur took the bottle back and offered her his hand, pulled her to her feet. “C’mon,” he said. “Got better idea f’tonight.” They danced, sometimes more stumbled, about the room from there, his sly look triggering a heat in the air between them as they traded off on the bottle, picked up a second when the first ran dry.

Intent on taking them from talking to something more intimate, Arthur guided her around the chairs and carded his fingers through her hair in long, gentle strokes. Sadie allowed him the indulgence, went so far to smile and it weren’t cunning nor angry. Odd that he might think it content, coming from her. Well and good in this moment, and she even let her head cant to side, cheek rubbed light on the inside of his wrist, lips leaving the trace of a kiss there.

Arthur wanted to remark on that, to put words to things that had been working through his head, made pressing by her admissions of knowing, of waiting before giving chase to her desires. That more had been behind her attraction than a few weeks on the run, and that it weighed heavier on her conscience than he’d have given her credit to. Made what he felt clear up some, gain definition he ain’t expected and wanted it said before he let the cravings of his body override the guidance of his mind. “Hear me out,” he said, smoothing down her hair, loose and beautiful in the firelight. She, proving her point on the impatience, shot him a coy look and started working at the buttons of his shirt with one hand, bottle held in the other. Seemed she intended a race between wits and wants, with her backing wants and determined as ever to win. He put his hand over hers, stilling the action for a moment, sabotaging her lead. “You’re impossible,” he muttered, his sardonic edge blurred by the rum, letting that trace of fondness through he ain’t much shown.

Sadie laughed, unexpected in the freeness of it, not laced with bitter venom or cruel sarcasm. Almost natural, the sort of sound he wanted to inspire from her more now that he’d heard it once. “I told you,” she said, managing another button free despite his intervention, “I ain’t patient.”

These fingers pulling at his shirt were making it harder to get his point across, mind that it did make him harder for her in that way he’d attend to momentarily. Arthur focused, set his eyes on hers, mock stern in his expression. The nail of her index finger scratched light and idle on his neck, waking that hunger for her he’d been learning himself to harbour and hold. “You waited long enough before,” he grumbled, pulling her head closer. Tempted to kiss her, baited her with the idea, but held back to make his point.

Her mouth moved, tongue wetting her lips in her anticipation. When he did not deliver, she tried to close the distance between them, but he held her back, the chuckle his that time. She relented with reluctance after a moment of fighting it, foot kicking down an impatient beat on the floor. “Fine,” she conceded. “What is it, Arthur?”

Rare to have her where he needed her, paused and able to see his grin, uncertain and shy though it felt in what it preceded. More a smile, awkward and true, as he found the words, near as come to terms with things here, with her. Arthur felt different when it came to Sadie, in ways that’d been foreign when he lay with others. The moments worth saving stretched beyond measure the longer that he stayed with her, even as her fingers were trembling with her need to rush, to continue and forge ahead with her usual certainty. “I been thinking about it a while now,” he started, quiet as he lifted her hand so he could press a soft kiss to her fingertips, “but ain’t sure mostly whether I oughta say it. You got this way under my skin, like I ain’t able to keep you out.”

Arthur knew they were both full or near enough drunk to blame this on the rum, second bottle already spent but for some few mouthfuls. Maybe the wrong time to be honest like this, but also the only time he could push back years of scars and walls to let himself say things. Had to say them soon, though; his desires were nearer to winning over his want to speak, so he steeled himself. Pulled them words up, like if he were writing in his journal, only he put voice to them over putting graphite to paper, wanted her knowing it over keeping it secret. “Might be that I real like you,” he said carefully. “Might also be that I could love you.”

Sadie’s face ran a rapid shift of emotions, hard to track and blurred by alcohol; uncertain to surety, panic to pleased. Made her own admissions, passionate and pushy, but like she ain’t expected him to say anything in return and she’d no words, no quick reply readied. Lust, though, pushed all that out to have her step closer, stretch up so her mouth could tease at the curve of his ear, a soft and reedy whisper to her voice. “Right now,” she murmured, “might be that I want you to fuck me.”

The want, its open invitation delivered with a soft breath, dealt the final blow to resolve and resistance both; his insecurity of admission lost, forgotten in the wake of anticipation. Arthur let it, relented on his restraint, and licked his lips with hunger. “Since you insist,” he said, heady with the rush, the flush of her skin and its heat on his. Freed her hand, helped her to strip away the buttons of his shirt, undo his belts while he held on the bottle, left a trail of their clothes as they shuffled towards the bed. He set the bottle careful on the floor to savour later and worked at divesting her equal of coverings to stymie him. All either of them ended with by the time the mattress threatened to trip him were Sadie in her shirt, loose and scooped half off her shoulder and it were a sight that made him bite down on the exposed skin, relish the hot cry of it as he stepped up behind her, hands drifting beneath that cottony layer. The gunshot scar plied under his fingertips with a familiar smoothness, then he moved past it, down her hip and along the curve of it, along her thigh until she bit back a moan when he played his fingers along the wet, hot skin between her legs, teasing here and again whenever it made her call out, whimper, shudder against him.

Sadie pushed her head back against his shoulder, panting with her need while he continued laying marks on and stealing tastes from her skin with his mouth. Her body up against him were impossible to ignore, the claw-like grip of her fingers reaching back to clutch at his hip. There were no doubt to his want of this, the length of him hard, pushing and craving. But still with his hand did he work her, fingers spreading her folds, testing how ready she was, warm and wet. This made her tremble, a whimpering sound shifted to a frustrated growl the longer he teased.

Arthur hadn’t been surprised in learning how vocal she could be, but he enjoyed his part to inspiring the frustrating mewling. “What was that?” he asked, teasing, even as she reached down and laid her hand over his, pushed him deeper between her legs, nudged his fingers to where he might enter her. Already he nudged at her from behind, thick and ready, but wanted to make sure she felt the same.

“Arthur,” she managed the warning through gritted teeth. “Come on.”

Ain’t no real cruelty to his teasing and they both knew it. Earned himself a huff of complaint when he stopped, pulled his hand free to put both on her hips, turning her to face him. He lifted her there, back onto the bed and nudged her further so he could crawl on after her. Little needed in these hints, with Sadie backing up to the wall, legs spread and face flush as she bit her lip. He came up to her, pulled her closer, used his hand to position himself and press slowly into her. He groaned, she whined and wiggled; both of them wanted. It took some time, some trials before he felt all of him within her. He pulled back, rested on his knees and held her up on top of him. After teasing and taunting, now he let her set the pace, riding him as he continued to kiss and bite at her neck, encouraged her to a swift rhythm.

The cadence of her panting, the cusses she uttered as she neared the cusp, sounded loud in the cabin and she braced her hands with tightly gripped fingers on his shoulders, pushing to a frantic pace, grinding her hips until she cried out, loud and satisfied as the flesh around him tightened and twitched. Carried him, but not enough before her breathing started to steady, leaving him inside her as she slowed, not yet clear if they might pursue a second round for her.

Despite the lack of satiation, his throaty chuckle were pleased that she’d taken what she needed first. He could ply himself later, but the lady always was his priority as he ran his hand down her shoulder, her arm, then started to straighten out the shirt she wore once again. He soothed the flat of his palm down her back as she caught her breath, forehead head leaned against his.

They sat together, coupled still, for some minutes before he felt her shift, her hand reached down between them as she pulled herself off of him. The warmth of her body replaced by the curl of her fingers around the base of his cock, setting clear her intent that he would finish here, not later. Sadie drew back, pausing to kiss him, then gave him a challenge in her smirk, how she moved her hand up and down his hard length, wet and easy to stroke in its smooth coating from her climax. Arthur choked back a groan, harder to do as she watched him, eased back off his lap.

When she kneeled down and put her mouth to the head of him, running her tongue over it, he shuddered and clenched his hands in on themselves. Her eyebrows quirked up and she began to work him with her mouth, suction and tongue playing an intense alternating pressure that he’d not long a resistance to. Sadie had dipped her head forward, fully taking him in, when he hit the end of his stamina, stifling his own guttural sounds as his pleasure rode through him, as he shot into the warmth of her mouth. She seemed torn on it briefly, then swallowed best she could before pulling off of him, releasing flesh sensitive and softening in the aftermath.

Quiet, finally, until she made a face and reached for the bottle on the ground. She took a bracing swig of it, a deep pull that burned different, but she swallowed that down to clear the fluids in her mouth. “Ain’t ever liked the taste,” she muttered in explanation, pushing him back to lay on the bed, coming up next to him, offering the remains of the bottle.

Arthur frowned, took the bottle and drank the last of it, then shot her a firm look. “Then you don’t do it,” he muttered. The lip of the bottle carried the sticky and salted sweet taste of the both of them, passed from her lips, but the rum cleared it quick.

Sadie laughed, shrugged up her shoulder as though it weren’t no real issue. “I ain’t giving up something what makes you perform so well, Mr. Morgan,” she teased, resting her hand on his chest. He grumped a bit, but after the ride and the pleasure, weren’t much soul left in him for that. Arthur made sure to sort and settled the blankets on them before he let them both relax, sated, his admission forgotten.

-

Frost sharpened the tips of each blade of grass, reminder that the hot airs from the plains by Blackwater couldn’t keep the northern shores of the Montana warm as the winter settled its full force over West Elizabeth. No snow – yet, as Abigail would pragmatically state – but damn was it chilly. John’d left their little wood stove stoked to keep her and the boy warm while he rode out on one of their borrowed horses, but he regretted what fool part of him decided to be responsible and get this done early to keep her from being too sore on him later.

‘Borrowed’ on the horses being one of the points that’d make them both sore and raw if they started talking on it. John carried still the satchel filled with supplies and monies, Arthur’s final gift right before his death, but he ain’t felt right using anything from it. Raw hurt surged every time that he touched it, thought to how it served reminder to the brother he’d lost, the connection of family that’d soured, and how he barely made it out with Abigail and Jack, much less himself alive in the mix.

Don’t look back; that was what Arthur ordered of him, but how could he not? Half of his life spent in Arthur’s shadow left him struggling to look forward, to honour that last wish, and it’d take time. The grief hadn’t faded, nor shown signs that it cared to. Never lost the grateful taste of his freedom, though. John Marston might be all but alone, but he was set to be his own master at the sacrifice of others.

Free.

Except from Abigail scolding him any time old habits won out over laying low and living honest.

John supposed some that this was why he made the point to ride out early and alone, riding through the cold of frost to Riggs Station every week to pick up supplies ordered off the general goods catalogues, and to see if any letters arrived for Robert Jackson, the moniker he set for them, using Abigail and the boy’s names to serve some hint of anonymity.

Cold mornings like this, though, often served up this rueful regret for leaving the warmth of their cot, Abigail asleep next to him. The chill of air was sharp and a poor companion, digging into the ache of his shoulder with fresh claws. Mostly healed now, from being shot and roughed over from when he’d fallen from the train. Then all that chaos what’d followed it, tearing it worse and leaving it hurting for weeks longer than it ought’ve.

John rolled back his shoulder, ignoring that aching echo of the past, and stretched it. “Come on, boy,” he urged the horse, an older stallion with no real rush left in his bones. They’d sold the Appaloosa shortly after the Colter run, used the money to build up their small supply of equipment, which left him with the moody old horse that pulled their wagon for riding whenever he made the trek.

Riggs Station had better repute to it than other places he’d been, with stage and train tickets both easy and legal to acquire; made it simpler to live without skirting too close to unlawful encounters. It’d not last, never would with him according to Abigail, but it’d been over a month camped without trouble. John found the station clerk, Hector, a bit discouraged, but having to transfer back and forth every few days to work the Strawberry counter like as not did that to a man. Hard to set down roots, though he’d no pity, real or imagined about it. Transitory life could as much make a man as break him; ain’t his fault that Hector let it do the breaking.

“Morning, Robert,” said clerk drawled once he’d hitched his horse, come up to the counter.

“Morning, Hector,” he greeted, flat to match the man. “How’s the job?”

That soured his expression and John braced himself for the familiar complaints that rolled off this man’s tongue every time he was fool enough to ask, which was every damn time. “Bosses are talking about adding a Flatneck counter,” Hector rambled into his list of grievances. “Expecting that I’ll pull two days a week at each of them. I ask you: How can a man have a family life when he can’t be left to work in one place?”

“Beats me.” Only, it didn’t. John lacked the golden badge of being a model family man, mustered up maybe a tarnished and rusted iron one, but Abigail stuck with him and the boy, well. Jack respected him, but was too young to do more. They kind of made their dented dynamic work, so ain’t no expectation that others couldn’t when it really mattered.

“He can’t. That’s the answer.” Morose lamentations that continued on as Hector went about, checked the postal slots, fetched up a parcel of goods and a thin letter marked rough with his fake name. “It’s no wonder my sort of folk get so discouraged about things.”

“That’s a real shame,” John agreed, non-committal about it. Accepted the parcel, the envelope with a nod, done his level best not to show interest. They’d few, at best, in the way of correspondents; any bit of news directed to this name meant something worth reading. Nodded his thanks, looking forward to getting away from the lamentation of the legal life before he started bitching on it from the outlaw experience. “Appreciate it. Anything else?”

Hector pondered on that brief, a light dawning. “There was a feller here earlier asking about you,” he noted. “I told him you’d probably be come by later.”

John fell quiet, the good repute of the station strained suddenly. “What’d this fella look like?” he asked, suspicion rising. Clerk knew him only as Robert and he’d sent only a couple letters, desperate warnings encoded careful in casual words that they not head to the Hollow for those what’d left or been away when it all fell apart. Nothing to Dutch, Bill, Micah, or Javier; he was a fool, but not an ignorant lout no matter what Abigail accused him of on their bad days. But any of them letters intercepted might’ve led bad influences, or worse, Pinkertons down on him if they’d figured his code.

“He was pretty dark, but I didn’t get a good look at him.” A shrug; didn’t much matter to ol’ Hector unless it profited him some. Bounty hunter or long lost friend got the same information unless there was the shine of coin to enhance his recollections.

“Real helpful,” John deadpanned. “Thanks.” He turned away, tucked the parcel under his arm. Letter didn’t have much to it and he unfolded it with one hand as he walkd, scanned the penmanship. The name. Charles had sent it, meaning John’d been right to send one up by way of the Wapiti reservation. He read the gist of it, that Charles had received his note after he’d gotten news of the Hollow. Ain’t much new to it, but a mention of John’s cousin Caroline Adler having gone south. Nothing about Arthur or the rest of the gang. Relieving at least to read that Charles was otherwise okay. Letter were as sparse in words as the man himself and he quick refolded it, tucked it into the satchel.

That stranger asking after him remained a point stuck at the back of his mind as he stored the parcel in his saddlebags, mounted up to leave. Caution had him start west along the tracks, followed the road some ways out. Camp was back southeast, where the Montana dumped into Flat Iron Lake, about as defensible as they could get, a small boat shored up in case things took a turn and land routes were dangerous. His thinking now was to follow the creek and ride that to the riverbank. It’d let him double-back that way off the beaten path. Should lose most pursuers that way, or lure them down where he could measure their intent, kill them if he had to. All things playing out as they had, a lethal solution to any risk of being identified was the right solution to him.

John kept the pace casual, nodded a greeting to riders headed the opposite direction, claimed a few cautious glances back. He hated it the whole time, of the mind to confront over this inconspicuous mess, but Abigail wanted normal. Jack wanted normal. Hell, Arthur died to get him normal and he had to do it.

Damn it.

No real sign of being followed made manifest, so he kicked up the pace to the reluctance of the stallion, took a bend in the road over by the creek and rode the stubborn old horse down within the banks of the creek twenty or so feet to disguise his route before letting him back up on dry ground and continued down the steep slide of a hill that’d end in the riverbank.

He’d been all but ready to shrug it off as paranoia when he saw the rider waiting for him on that very riverbank, tucked a few lengths back from where it met the creek, all but impossible to see from the road, annoyingly hard to see on the way down. The horse felt familiar to his eyes, but had too many dappled shadows from the overhang of branches to make much sense of its coat and with the sun’s trek up in the east casting its light into his eyes, the rider was impossible to make out as more than a shadowed form. John squinted to gain some clarity, hand drifted slow and careful to the butt of his gun. Never to safe to risk being sorry with the way his luck’d been going, and he kept himself ready to draw at the first hostile hints.

“Robert... Jackson, right?”

The surge of wary adrenaline drained off at the amused cant to the familiar voice and, all options considered, it was a downright welcome one at that. John let out the tight breath in his lungs and shook his head. “Should’ve known it was you, Charles,” he said, relieved. He pulled short his horse, relaxed back in the saddle, and checked over this friend, not foe. Of all the outlaws he’d known, Charles Smith came off as nearest to the best of them, his stance one of surviving, not skirmishing. When he sided with something, John could rest assured it the best moral option of the limited spread and that counted for something when his own moral compass veered south something fierce.

Charles smiled, a reserved look about him, but nodded his greeting. “It’s good to see you,” came simple, straightforward, and honest. It’d been months and more since they’d crossed paths and with the tension, the constant pressure at camp, they’d not talked to more than what needed to be done at the time. There’d been nothing good about it either, with Dutch angry that John’d been broken out and Arthur pushing him to be ready to fly at any notice. Charles’d been occupied with the rapidly deteriorating situation at Wapiti, the flashfire set and fanned by Dutch, the rigidity of the army acting on orders and ignorance to quash disquiet that the government itself had set; he’d ridden northwest to help there before everything shattered, saved from that reality and the Pinkerton massacre.

They stayed there a moment, weighed down by that shared past, before John gestured for Charles to ride with him, back east towards camp. “You alone?”

A nod greeted the question. “The move north has been held up by government bureaucracy,” Charles explained. “I had hoped to see them settled in Canada, but after the violence, no one is allowed in or out for the time being.”

John nodded. He didn’t understand the complexities of the Wapiti as well as Arthur would’ve, but knew at least that the government was damn good at bungling things up for the regular folk. “Then what’re you keeping at for now?”

Charles shrugged, smooth and strong. “This is not the first time I’ve ridden alone,” he remarked. “Old habits die hard.”

Less than a year spent with the gang, John recalled, and he’d spent much of that held apart from them by choice. He and Charles might not have connected much, but he’d seen how Arthur got along with the man. Heard the few times that Charles spoke at the campfire, the quiet comments from others of how good his intentions, his actions could be. The least he could do, he figured, was make an offer of sorts. “Abigail and I’ve got this spot that ain’t half bad,” he started, awkward. Scratched at the back of his neck and sighed, shook his head; recalled that Charles ain’t ever been seen idle, taking on extra guard shifts, maintaining the wagons, going hunting to keep from standing still. “It’s more work than I figured, living rough with just her and the boy. Plenty of stuff to do to keep it livable, but you’re welcome to stick with us a bit. Until you figure out what you’re doing.”

“Appreciate it.” Charles sounded sincere there, of the sort that didn’t have the kind of conning in his mind that’d been near as natural for Hosea. “But,” he added with the tang of regret, “I won’t be staying in the area long. I’ve got business down in Rhodes.” Cryptic and odd, since Lemoyne’d been unkind, in the gentlest way to saying it, to folk of his colour and heritage.

John stared at him a bit as they rode, trying to how to challenge that without making it awkward. Figured, ultimately, that he’d just screw up the delicate phrasing and let it go. “You at least oughta stay a couple days,” he pressed. “Abigail’l be relieved to have someone smarter to talk with and maybe we could... I don’t know. Take the boy fishing or something?” Since he still ain’t done that with his own son and had no real desire to be that near the riverside or lakeshore for extended periods of time.

A chuckle greeting him at that. “Leading a busy life then?”

John snorted back the laugh, scratched at the back of his neck some longer for his foolish thoughts. “Laying low,” he clairified. “Been a rough couple months and-“ Stopped himself, met with no easy way to explain everything that’d happened since they last spoke. He coughed, cleared his throat. “It’s been rough,” he finished around the knotted ache that thinking about Arthur invariably tied in his chest.

Charles nodded slowly, seemed to understand without the words that’d frame in some context. The tight lines of his braid, the shorn short hairs along the sides of his head hardened his appearance. Made Charles look less the congenial soul he’d remembered seeing. Reminded him of the hardness underlying every kindness, in surviving. The way he held himself, shoulders back and eyes alert, had him look readied for an attack that could come from anywhere. With all that’d happened, maybe that was the whole of it. “It’s been rough on everyone,” he agreed, forcing no measure. No judgement lay hidden in his words or tone.

Faint splashes as his horse stepped around rocks, dipped into the shallows of the river as they picked their way down the Montana. John had questions burning strong in him that wanted out, but no sure way to utter them that’d make sense. Other than Sadie, he’d not talked with anyone from the gang and this chance drove a thirst in him to understand better what happened to that life he’d known. He tried, then, to start with the first, basic concept. “What do you know about what happened?”

They kept on in silence for a bit, Charles piecing together what he knew and could say to help. “Pinkertons attacked the camp,” his hazarded explanation. “There was nothing left by the time I rode through. No sign of Dutch.”

John heard the name, felt that distantly bitter echo of his old life’s anguish, the hardness of anger that kept it sequestered. “I doubt anyone will find much of him for a while,” he said, rubbing at the phantom pain of his shoulder. Of coming to at the side of the tracks, Dutch barely affording him a glance before he turned away. Of hiding in brush and ditches to avoid roads thick with law, to get back to his family in time for it to break for the last time. “You see him, be careful,” he warned. “Dutch ain’t Dutch no more. Left me to die on that train job, turned Javier and Bill against us.” Hard flint cut the edge of his tone, the words forced through as he forged ahead. Gotta run. Don’t look back.

His mind stumbled and turned over the words again, catching up with what his ears had heard with a spark. A flare of hope. “You went back?” John asked. He tried not to jump to no conclusions, but suddenly the thought he might hear something new had him alert, anticipating something, _anything_ , to salve the dark unknowns that ate at him late into the nights.

Charles nodded. “Found Miss Grimshaw shot dead,” he said, softly spoken with respect for her passing. “I buried her as best I could. Everyone else was gone though.”

That small spark sputtered out, subdued by the reality that nothing was going to change what he’d lost out there. But, fool that he knew he could be, John kept at it. “Did you-“ Cut himself off. He was supposed to move on, damn it, not hold to the past like he could find worth in it. “I was up there when it happened,” he tried instead. “They turned on us. Micah...” Bit off the first foul words that cropped up when he spat out the name. “He was the rat, and he killed Miss Grimshaw. Arthur and I almost got out, but we, uh.” How the hell was he supposed to explain this? Ain’t no clue, no readiness to define it. “We got separated,” he finished, flat. Without details.

This brokered an even longer, heavier pause as they slowly wound downriver. Charles kept quiet, not one to struggle with words, until he found the exact ones he meant to say. “I buried him up there,” he said, regret staining his words. For having to tell him this, no doubt. “I’m sorry, John.”

That struck harder than he’d wanted, the last nail in the coffin and he could feel the grief well up, the loss tight in his chest. For all their struggles, brothers they had been to the end and now? John’d been orphaned again by life and circumstance, left with only the family he’d made and robbed of the one he’d found. “No,” he said, voice thick with that held back grief. “I’d- Hell. I ran into Sadie a while back, in Valentine,” he added, rough. “She never said it, but I kind of knew, by that point.” His laugh, morose, tore at those last shreds of hope he’d been carefully harbouring and let them scatter to the wind. “Thanks, anyway, for... y’know. Everything, I guess.”

Charles nodded and let that thread of conversation fray and lapse, scratching his fingers idly along the line of his mare’s mane. No more questions, no more talk of the Hollow. They rode on in silence until the quick, gravel-treacherous scramble up the riverside bank towards their small encampment that he’d set up to be their home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's Day, y'all! And happy 200k words!
> 
> I swear that I did not plan to have the first real admission of love from Arthur happen on this day's update, much as I did not plan for the relationship to establish during the Christmas-era updates. They are just coincidences that work out well for us!
> 
> Thanks, always, for your support and consistently coming back, reading. The kudos, the comments, the discussions. Readers, you chose to take a chance on my writing and I'm honoured.
> 
> This past week saw me begin the epilogue of A Sinful Mercy in the penned draft and I am so... frankly? Impressed that I've made it this far and eager to continue onwards. Still nearly two notebooks off, but there's the end on the distant horizon that'll free up time for the sequel and my other writings.
> 
> iluall - be safe and kind to yourselves!
> 
> \- Kichi @[KichiWhy](https://twitter.com/KichiWhy) (Twitter)


	47. Chapter X: Willowstead - 22: Distinguished Visitors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while since the Marston crew's had the chance for friendly, social visits and it shows. Dutch uncovers more threads tying him to the stagecoach misfortunes of the Cartwrights.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

One stout tent fashioned from a few different swathes of canvas stitched and patched together, stretched over young trees chopped and bent to dry into strong arches, lashed together to provide some rigidity, some permanence to the transience of a campsite. The campfire tended and burning warm with a simmering pot of boiled meal was hooked over it, the charred grill empty on the offside and the tin coffee pot steaming lazily next to it. Scattered about were barrels and crates, with the effort put to stack them against their ‘borrowed’ wagon lost before the task had been completed. Not exactly cozy like some summer cottage, but it served as their home for the here and now.

The canvas panels what served entry to the tent were not tied shut that morning, one rolled back as Abigail swept out lingering leaves and dirt from the rough planks he’d laid down to stave off frost and mud from soaking their feet. Jack sat on his small cot, engrossed in the reading of a book picked up in Valentine to soothe his complaints of loneliness and boredom. The words and concepts in it were more complicated than the penny dreadfuls Hosea used to sneak him, but that kept the boy busy puzzling out the letters and ideas and, far as John figured, it’d beat learning his letters off of Evelyn Miller’s dense ideological diction the way he had.

“Mornin’ all,” he called ahead, keeping it casual as he and Charles rode up the gravel slope to their little oasis of family living. “You ain’t never gonna guess who found me over by Riggs.”

Alarm rose first and fast on Abigail’s face, her shoulders ever tense with the fear that their past’d catch up on them, convinced that the next rider would be here to take them on or take them out. Hands went tense on the shaft of the broom and he’d no doubt she’d use it to beat a man senseless what tried to take Jack or hurt John while she were still standing; maybe he ought teach her pistol shooting some time, to be something more effective at a distance than a broom handle. Felt some days like she were the fiercer of the two of them, no matter how many graves he’d filled over the years, and like he ought help equip her better to be applying that ferocity on something other than his ‘lazy, liquor-living ass’ the way she done and claimed most days.

“Morning,” came the non-threatening greeting and Charles nodded, acknowledged her directly with the look her way, eased her off the edge of fight over flight. Weren’t much that could trigger flight in Abigail, never with her family in the crosshairs and not after the year they’d just barely survived having. But fight had been the risk for a second there, soothed and smoothed.

Abigail let off the tense breath she’d kept up and shot John a withering look of annoyance. “You fool,” she grumbled, irritated. “Gave me a right scare!”

There were arguments he could win, but John knew them to be few and far between; instead of fighting that losing battle, he shrugged up his shoulders, helpless. “Give me some credit, Abigail,” served as his defensive reply. “I wouldn’t be so damn calm about it if things were gone wrong.”

“Don’t be crass around the boy,” she said, cut straight to the quick. She set aside the broom and self-consciously smoothed out the front of her skirt, nodded to Charles with the respectful propriety that she left off when it was just the two of them. “It’s good to see you, Charles,” came off tense, but nearer to pleasant than the snapped tone used on John. “You made it out okay?”

Charles dismounted his mare, holding the reins loose in his fist. He nodded, simplest way to answer, though he added a few words to clarify it: “I wasn’t anywhere close when it happened,” he said, the statement made evident that he knew something had happened up on the ridge. Saved them from explaining more, him from admitting details he wasn’t ready to discuss.

They’d a roughed out hitching post and John pulled up his stallion there, hitched the old bloke and dug out the parcel of supplies from the saddlebags. “Charles here was askin’ after Robert Jackson at the station,” he explained. It moved them off that topic, towards the apparent coincidence of their encounter that morning over the harrowing hell of their year.

Abigail winced, not liking that their moniker had sufficient recognition and ready to blame him for the idea of it, no doubt; always abrasively at each other, yet couldn’t give the other up and it served headaches and happiness in equal measure. “Fool name,” she muttered, moving over to the fire with a quick twitch of her wrist to beckon them both. “Come on, then. Coffees’ ready.”

Charles hitched his mare and moved over, taking up one of the logs he’d hauled in to frame the firepit. “Less recognizable than Tacitus,” he pointed out, played evenly into his strength as a mediator and a voice of reason amidst what’d been a mess of folk without it.

“Told you it was fine,” John pressed for his advantage, wrestling an extra log stump into position for himself. They’d not much of a setup for company ‘round here, had to make it work on the go and Charles counted as their first guest since they pitched after leaving the Valentine area.

Jack watched them from the comfort of the tent, still too young to full appreciate the pseudonyms, the way things had fractured and brought about the need for the new one. The boy ain’t full caught up to what’d happened, still talking fond of the strange foods that bastard Bronte had fed him. Least he’d smartened up now to not ask when he’d next have a chance to eat that way ‘round his mother. Kid looked shyly their way, but seemed happy enough to be seeing a friendly face, and he watched the three of them close. “Is Uncle Arthur coming too?” he asked, a familiar question that they ain’t full trained in him the answer to. No way yet figured to get him understanding proper that weren’t no way for Arthur to show up no more. John’d been avoiding facing that fact himself, ain’t no way he wanted to handle telling his boy something his brain and heart weren’t keen on hearing.

A grimace come from Abigail, who shot him a look and he responded with a helpless shrug – what did she expect? John sat down on the stump and didn’t offer answers, seeing as he had none of them anyway.

“Not today, Jack.” Normally respecting their guidance for Jack, Charles took the opening to speak up. Rescued the moment by it, must’ve sensed that they hadn’t full impressed on the boy the fallout of the gang, including the lives lost to it. Hard enough it’d been in getting him to understand Hosea and Lenny as gone, but losing everything else? Exhausting to piece together a way to say it what wouldn’t land the boy in nightmares.

Jack sighed and looked back at his book. “Okay,” his mumbled dejection, interest waned in the absence of his favoured uncle.

Abigail pointedly fussed at the coffee pot, pouring a cup for their guest first, moving them past the awkward stillness of the subject. “So, you two met up at the station?” she asked, brisk and to the point. Sharp woman, and wanted to make sense of this meeting as something they could talk about and define, not guess at.

“No.” John wasn’t quite wanting to explain it; something about the way they talked had him reluctant to share overmuch, defensive that she’d just tear into it as failing. Liked and loved her, sure, but damn could he put his foot in his mouth around Abigail Roberts and she helped by shoving it in there the few times he kept it on the ground. Not to mention, telling her he’d gone a roundabout way, thinking they’d been compromised? Ain’t no allure to that admission; John knew better than to add fuel to that fire.

Still, she gave him the chance to elaborate, to dig his grave before she tripped him into it; spent the time handing the cup off to Charles, who took it with a grateful nod. When he did not, she let out an annoyed breath. “I hate it when you’re quiet like that,” she told him, pouring herself a cup and, pointedly, not one for him. She sat on the log nearer his perch, at least, and her hand absently moved to tuck a few strands of his hair back behind his ear, fussing and caring both.

“I was riding back,” he protested, like it was no big surprise. “Charles found me, right?” The look he shot the man weren’t quite plaintive, but came near enough to it.

Charles could well have hidden his smile in his coffee by the way he went to drinking it quick, ignoring the heat of the liquid to smother his chuckle.

“Nice, Charles,” John’s flat comment, for throwing him to the wolves after he’d already given them plenty of taste for him by up there near Colter. He wrinkled his nose. “What’s it matter anyways? Point is we ran into each other.” John moved, kneeling down to pour himself a tin mug of coffee, blowing quick at the steam that drifted from it.

“Pardon me for being cautious, y’big doofus,” she shot over with venom. He loved and hated the way Abigail never put up with his nonsense. Loved it because it meant she cared enough about him to fight with him; hated it because it led to her winning the fights more often than he did. Right then, he leaned towards the hating side of that spectrum and silenced himself with a sip of hot coffee.

“You are all safe here,” Charles interceded, calm in saving John from running his mouth. “I rode over plenty of Roanoke Ridge when I found out what happened. There were no signs that you were followed west.” He continued to work at his coffee, savouring it, and John looked a bit closer at him. Saw some few more shadows under his eyes, signs of strains that pulled at him from stresses and fractures unseen.

Kept off commenting on that, he did; John instead took hold of his words, puffed up his chest some and went right back to digging himself a hole with his next statement: “See? I _told_ you we’d be fine here!”

Abigail rolled her eyes, focused her questions and intensity on their visitor instead. “Then why’ve you come?” she asked, testing Charles’s resolve instead. “All we want’s to live peaceful-like. We ain’t looking for no trouble.”

Charles let himself indulge in thought for a time, deciding what to say and how many words he might need to say exactly how much he intended to say. Near always careful and measured in that way. “I came to see for myself that you three were okay,” he shared finally, honestly ringing in the sentiment. “After what happened... there aren’t many who could say the same.”

“Well, we are,” she said smartly, smoothing down her skirt some more. Bit of a nervous habit that she had, same as fiddling with whatever she might’ve had at hand, like tucking neatly his shirt when he had no plans on looking respectable damnit. “Doing as best we can, things considered,” added with a nod, as though that’d apply surety to her statements that none of them possessed.

Felt like he’d been cast out of the conversation some there; John sat back on his stump. “Charles here wrote,” he interrupted, no doubt the fool to be wading back into the thick of it. “Said he’d heard from Mrs. Adler,” would put the pressure right back on their friend, his wife having given him hell twice over for not bringing her by after Valentine. And hopefully Charles’s forgive him for throwing him before that particular train.

Sadie Adler. That name wrought with it the heavy connotations he’d wanted, put the focus on that topic and nothing more. Abigail never’d hid her fondness and respect for the woman. And after what Sadie’d done to get him out of Sisika, well. John shared the sentiment. “Sadie’s okay?” she asked, sudden. Urgent in needing the confirmation.

Charles nodded, cautious. “She sent me a letter,” were his only provision of detail.

Bitterness, brief, clouded Abigail’s face at these mentions of correspondence. Hosea’d done his best to teach Jack both reading and writing, but she’d yet to gain grasp of either skill more than some basic measure. Seemed to discourage her, this fact, though she’d snapped at him the few times he’d offered to help. “What’d she say?”

“She’s found a place down south where it’ll be safe to hide out the winter.” Always hard, getting details out of Charles, and he felt a sudden caution at how quickly these words had been volunteered. John’d years of watching cons and liars, enough to know Charles was neither, but if that many words made it out of his mouth without prying , he wondered quick how many weren’t coming free right then. “I was riding that way when I came on Riggs, figured it best to stop in and see how you were making out.”

More than he’d normally say, a fact what still bothered him, but John just nodded. Tried to accept it as fact, didn’t need to be fighting with Charles the way he fought with his woman.

“She talk any about what she found?” Abigail remembered clear as he did that their paths split at Copperhead. There’d been yelling and protests, the threat and promise that Sadie’d shoot him if he tried to waste the freedom that Arthur’d paid dearly to get them by going back. Desperation and the need to survive saw sense to it, but while John’d heard before what Sadie found in going back, he ain’t been keen on sharing it with her. There’d been enough heartbreak for a while and that was his measure of it.

“No,” he interjected, the cues from their earlier discussions still fresh and raw. “There ain’t nothing new there.”

Abigail hesitated, then nodded slowly, processed the finality of it. Real tough survivor sort that she was, she couldn’t bear to dwell on those things that couldn’t change. Hurt by it, but she had this way of pushing it down. She flattened her hands on her lap, wrinkles pressed out of her skirt, and then picked up, finished her coffee.

“Well, Charles,” she spoke up after. “At least stay the day. John here caught some good fish yesterday and there’s enough for us all to eat well tonight. And maybe the both of you could take the boy hunting. Something to get him out of camp, because lord knows we don’t got many reasons to be straying far.”

Charles nodded, accepted this break in the solemnity, and set his cup down. “I can stay one day,” his promise. “But then I need to get moving.”

-

Two-fold were the priorities laid out before him and two-fold were they to be surmounted to see him to his next goal. Dutch had regained much of the patience needed to play the game, his world’s view expanded outwards again as the monies and securities afforded by the Cartwright favour allowed him to plan anew where next to go. Where exactly that would be remained unclear, required considerations set to it and the means to see to it.

West, perhaps, but that’d be some few years time and without the constant doubting plied from those of the gang that had become less than reliable, along for the money and protection over the vision he curated. Renewed now had been his passion of the American dream, freedom and riches both ripe for _his_ taking. No more Guarma. No more Tahiti. No more _running_. No. Dutch van der Linde had every intent to remain and prove wrong these desperate claims of law and order being the source of all security. He would _make_ his America, not flee from these paltry imitations of it.

First of the objectives towards this plan, what would lead to this fruition, was to secure those loyal few that stood with him when two he’d called and raised as sons turned on him. Time to reward the steadfast with freedom. First: Bill Williamson, arrested in Annesburg for drunken misconduct, made by the law as part of Dutch’s crew and sent down to Sisika for holding and the brief farce of a trial. Now due in Saint Denis for his hanging and that gave him priority, the first to be found, as did his devotion, blindly true until the end. Javier Escuella had yet to surface, but he had confidence that he would, in due time and with signals made sufficient to show that Dutch was well and active once more.

Once met, this first goal would furnish him with the reliable resources he needed to pursue the second: Track down Sadie Adler and define her role in what the Cartwrights had lost in this theft of theirs. Unsurprised to hear the woman may well have robbed them, having shown vigor and merit both for transgressions against the law. But to learn more required additional work, some loose strings to tie off while he waited for the transfer of Williamson as due to make transit tomorrow.

Dutch reined in the Count outside what had one been a stately manor house not far southeast from Sisika Penitentiary, but fallen to disuse and time’s ravages. White-washed planks were cracked, chipped, and faded; windows an equal spread between boarded up and broken, those with panes left intact showing a cloud of unattended filth. It, like the resident he was told lived here, had seen its beautiful days in the past, but would not give in quite yet to damage nor time.

Dismounted and hitched, he left Count next to the roan Arabian grazing patiently at the long, untended grass grown out along the hitching posts. This was no elegant mansion like the Cartwright manor, but it had once, perhaps, held that glory. He had seen and stayed in worse, Shady Belle a swift name risen to the forethought. This place, however, bore the value of location, near the shoreline and with the walls of Sisika risen high on a mid-river island, it had a poor view but exciting potential and proximity. There rested a beat down deck that he presumed to be of service, in some fashion, to the Cartwrights. All that dependent on how, exactly, the secluded jail played into their business affairs and a mystery he would unravel when the time was _right_.

Smoke curled up from the chimney, the smell of fried pork coming from the door left partially ajar. Not much else to note beyond that, no guards or other sorts to arouse suspicion. Dutch heard the scrape of something in a pan, the hour and scents about him suggesting the resident breaking their fast in this early morning.

Two, three steps carried him up onto a rotted porch; Dutch pushed the door open, kept his distance a moment until she noticed and decided not to shoot him. Always difficult to tell with her. All fiery brimstone and deadly resolve that’d filed away the softness of her gender’s expectations, sharpened her to a dangerous, unpredictable razorblade. Rather like a kicked dog, it became hard to measure if she’d bite or bark. The bark being of a sense, given her lack of predilections for verbalizing her needs, and left him expectant more to the bite.

“A pleasant morning to you, Miss Cartwright,” he greeted, pleasant vigor announced once her attention turned from the merits of merely shooting him dead to the skillet she’d set on the table, hot and sizzling with fried pork and eggs. Dutch stepped inside and closed the door to provide them with privacy, took the seat across from her and made no move nor want to partake of her meal.

Just as well, for Serah dug her way through the food, disinterested in his arrival as she satisfied what played out as a healthy appetite, worked up by something, based on the spread of food in the pan and the speed at which she consumed it. She ate with her customary silence and he leaned back, lighting a cigar to bide his time. It was when she put down her utensils and chased the food down with a long swallow of whiskey, not coffee, that he knew her ready to talk. Of a sort.

“Bill’s transfer rides northwest, through Lagras, come morning,” he said, laying out a map of the state. Ashes tapped off the cigar spread a grey flurry across the paper. The information had been freshly purchased by Cartwright contacts, considered reliable and sourced directly from the penitentiary. “They are transferring a labour team for Rhodes deployment, after which only Bill will remain. The guards are expected to peel off with the chain gang, leaving our opportunity best presented when the cart crosses the front of Caliga Hall grounds on its way back southeast towards Saint Denis.”

Serah leaned forward, tapped at the map where the wide brick-and-mortar walls provided gateway to the old Gray residence, circling her finger around it; the most fortified place for an ambush and her preference.

Dutch shook his head. That was set too deep in the Gray lands, while the prison wagon would stick to its route along the road that edged the property. “I’ll ride out from Saint Denis,” he noted, pointed to the roadways he would take. “If you and your men are timely in killing, it will be when and only once I arrive that _I_ free Bill.” Dutch lay his palm flat on the map, obscuring Caliga Hall with his broad hand. “That, my dear, remains the critical part.” Always healthy, this reinforcement he planned to make; to be the role of saviour once more in Bill’s florid, living failures. The man hardly needed it, but being set free by Dutch would soothe any lingering hesitations from the bad business that consumed them at the Hollow. Reassert his devotion.

The hand she waved was dismissive, her equivalent of a desultory agreement. She knew already, gosh. An expectant look thrown at him, thinking perhaps to how he intended to interfere with her half of the job, but he only smiled and folded the map back up.

“I trust that you will deliver,” he said. Thus did he lay the onus on her, the need to prove herself to suit her pride and spite her brother.

Dutch tucked the paper back into the satin-lined pocket of his vest and looked about the otherwise empty eating area. “Whatever happened to Mr. McIntosh?” his polite inquiry, sweet and smooth. Samuel, in sending him here to speak with her, had indicated the man to be presently under her watch and questioning regarding the stagecoach blunder some month and more before.

The name brightened her normally dark expression and Serah smiled, pushing off the remains of her breakfast as she stood. All the indications of content pleasure, like the cat with the cream, were evident in her smug, self-satisfied expression. She pointed to a door at the far end of the room. Half-height and bulky, it served as cold storage for dried goods.

Cautiously curious, Dutch stood and walked across the room, looked over the splintered wooden panels, then over to her. “In here?” asked to be certain. She crossed her arms and nodded. Invited him to make the next move.

Apprehension did not serve to describe him here. Dutch knew and had seen sufficient evidence of her cruelty to expect near anything from this woman. It served him a healthy dose of preventative respect and control measured towards and over her way. No point in ruffling the crow’s feathers in reverse when he was better served in smoothing them. Anticipation, perhaps, better suited the moment as he pushed open the door.

Within the room, cramped and cold, one lowly lit oil lamp cast hazy light on the dearly noted Mr. McIntosh - Dutch did presume it to be him, at least. The confident smile that had reminded him of Sean was gone now, half the man’s teeth broken or missing. Both eyes beaten shut, bruised and blackened. Propped up against the wall and held there by fear, he jerked at the sudden fresh air, the extra light, and ducked his head away from the intrusion, showing himself alive at least.

“It seems you both had _quite_ the spirited conversation,” Dutch remarked back towards Serah. He had overseen worse done to a man before and witnessed the fallout of such cruelties, that poor fool Kieran come unbidden to mind, but most were dead by this point. McIntosh retained a strained, whistling wheeze with each inhale. Left alive, as though the information harvest yet to reap its full benefit.

“It’s funny,” he remarked, stepping in to crouch some safe few feet of distance from the broken man. “I would have credited you as having finished by now. Your brother spoke quite highly of your persuasive abilities.” Dutch looked over her handiwork, all slow and painful inflictions meant to promise an end to agony if the mind but broke and provided what was wanted. He preferred the longer game, a psychological state of being that shaved sanity without skinning flesh. Less mess, in the end, and this bloodied sight reinforced that.

Serah grunted, annoyed by his mere hint at her effectiveness being questioned. She stepped in and past him, kicked McIntosh hard in the side. His ribcage flexed too easily inward, already broken, but the pain of this incited worse. A keening scream ripped from the man and she locked her fingers in McIntosh’s hair, forced his head back, pointed with her fingers to Dutch. Some meaning here that he’d not been privy to.

McIntosh coughed, mouth held open to breathe with a nose broken and blocked by clotted blood. He licked his lips painfully slow, started to speak. “She wanted me to tell ye meself,” came a weak whisper. “Left me tongue to do it. Promised to kill me if I done it.”

Serah smiled again, smug, and released his head. Patted it gently, like a good dog might be treated, and gestured he continue, given that she could not.

The next hour turned remarkably revelatory. Dutch ignored that his knees did not appreciate being bent for quite so long, much as Serah ignored that McIntosh were a beaten man minutes from death. Any time he slowed or left a detail, she’d kick him anew to remind him the cost of his disobedience. The promise of death to end it.

Oh, and _my_ what disobedience.

McIntosh had been entrusted with monies ‘withdrawn’ from the collapsing equity of Leviticus Cornwall’s operations up north, mostly cash, but also some rare alcohols that could fetch fair prices at the right fence or in Saint Denis’s collector’s scene. He’d been the mastermind to crafting extra hidden compartments locked tight with the eyes of the standard robber blind to it. Always ran a locked rear trunk too, the bait with acceptable losses, to protect the true haul.

Brilliant, but unduly complex and, well. McIntosh made poor choices on passengers. The woman, signed on as Sadie Adler, matched the widow’s nature to perfection and the explanation of her shooting, killing those that tried to rob him? Sealed the match without question to the fierce fighter’s spirit. It was the man, however, of her accompaniment that lacked identity. That Mr. Adler had been dead and frozen in the northern reaches for half a year and more now played truth to that, this purported husband a ruse at best.

“Describe him again.” Dutch prompted, traces of an apprehensive cloud settled over his thoughts.

McIntosh took some minutes, gathered himself back to the details, the time when his life’d gone off the rails. “Hardly a man left to ‘im,” he said, accent tripping over and truncating the words. “Bearded. Long hair. Coughed a lot, but seemed to know her real well. Didn’t full get along, but ye never meet no husband and wife what do.”

That eliminated John, hard dark and bound to that prostitute, Abigail. Most of the rest gone. Micah run, but she’d hatred for him at first sight and would have shot him dead over played as wed. Could be some random ally, but the description bothered at him. “The name. What name did she use for him?”

Man thought hard on that. Long. Fought the hazes of memory in fear of what Serah might visit on him to help dislodge th edetails. “Mostly just husband and them sweet nothings lovers speak.” Paused long with his breathing shallow and weak, scraps of recollection coming to him that he’d trouble stitching together. “First time... First time I saw ‘em, though. A-something.”

Dutch felt the cold touch of the dead chill his spine, send him back to the last time he’d seen his boy, wheezing and dying. Dead. “Arthur?” he intoned, questioning and steel forced into his tone, rigidity required to keep his cards unknown.

“That’d be it,” McIntosh murmured, relieved to be free of fighting his memories to please them. “Arthur Adler. Sick fool, but he shot straight as she did...” Trailed off into painful, bloodied coughing and he needed nothing further.

This changed... well. This changed a great deal. Dutch had thought himself free of the tangled roots of his past, able to deal with Mrs. Adler and be done with it. But. Arthur? Alive? A complication thought dealt with. Leaving him to die had been painful, but natural. A necessity. Knowing that it closed off that chapter of his life without the guilt of pulling the trigger himself. His boy’d been due his death anyways. Just leave him. Deal with all else later.

The perfect solution for a pressing, _insistent_ problem.

Only now, not solved?

“What else is there to know?” he asked, directed at Serah, McIntosh now but a conduit to feed information with more pressing priorities arisen.

Serah made a gesture for words to continue and McIntosh struggled, but delivered. The ambush, their interrogations, then his being sent away with his paltry reward and the worthless horse. Took some painful encouragement to reveal Sadie’s appearance in Rhodes the day of the mining job, the few times seen in passing. The facts that nothing about Mrs. Adler turned out to be just passing through, but nothing about Arthur beyond that first stagecoach bungle.

What he lacked, though, was the knowledge of where the woman was. Dutch moved his thoughts ahead on that; Pearson was in Rhodes and might know something where McIntosh had been drained of use.

Only once all was said did Serah draw her pistol, pressing it to McIntosh’s temple with an expectant look to Dutch. Are you done? She seemed to ask. She pulled the trigger when he nodded and put an end to that matter, for now, though there was now so much more to be dealt with than a wayward widow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first chapter lacking both Sadie and Arthur, whut?
> 
> Threads are being laid out that'll lead us through the rest of the story, with Arthur and Sadie back in the spotlight next week. More characters are coming into the fold as well as we wind our way towards the end of notebook #2 of the four that exist (the fourth is already half-filled; epilogue's taking a lot of pages, folks).
> 
> Been yet another adventure of a week on my end and I just hope y'all are staying as best and safe as you can.
> 
> iluall - be kind to yourselves!
> 
> \- Kichi @[KichiWhy](https://twitter.com/KichiWhy) (Twitter)


	48. Chapter X: Willowstead - 23: Love and Loyalty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fondness and family are the kinds of bonding and bonds that Charles does not know by experience, mind that John and Abigail are doing the best to provide ample example of the more chaotic nuances of it. Arthur continues to work his way through the tangle of affection he's started at and Sadie? Well. She's out there to get some work DONE, folks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule: Weekly, Sunday evenings.

Fortune favoured them that day: The land kind in the hare flushed out and brought down with an arrow not far from camp; the lake giving in with its bounty of a fresh, plump little bluegill that gave great pride to young Jack, holding the fishing rod the duration of its struggle and not once mindful that it had been John’s hands braced below his on the rod that kept the fish from pulling him overboard. Small the fish was, but mighty its pull and the boy did not understand quite how to reel it in, too joyful at there being a bite. Nor had he noticed that John spent the afternoon pale and tense in the boat, set firm in the middle and obsessed with keeping his balance low and his hands with a deathgrip to the sides whenever he could. Lake fishing, Jack proclaimed after his catch, was more interesting than riverside, but he still wanted to go back to shore the moment his catch dropped into the bucket. His father, after a stiff and tense two hours on the water, agreed all too quickly.

It was a frivolity of youth to bypass the challenge of patience at the first bite of reward. Charles did not challenge it in the boy or his father, nor did he show his charmed amusement when John half-heartedly pestered his son to cast once more to give Abigail something more to feed them all. Ignorant, impatient, and youthful were the ears that his claims fell upon and Charles had already set the oars to row them back, so the discussion concluded with John relaxed at the prospect of being safely landbound once more.

Abigail fussed, pleasant and happy, over the small but hearty offerings. Cleaned it all up nice to serve as dinner, while Charles and John spent their late afternoon gathering and chopping extra firewood to hold them through the coming cold spells. Lauded her little boy with the pride of a mother as they ate and little Jack smiled wide for the praise, then chided John for complaining that they should’ve caught more since they’d already been out on the water and he ain’t going back for deep lake fish any time soon.

These three were all chaos and hot tempers, but also everything that a decent person wanted to be – though they would none of them admit it. Many times had many of the gang stepped up to protect them, failed or not, so that the dynamic could be experienced, lived through vicariously by those that could neither be afforded a partner nor a child in the lifestyle chosen.

Charles watched them from across the fire, bow unstrung and rested on his thighs as he worked a waxed cloth slowly along the wood to keep it from drying out into brittle fracture lines. He did not comment on the rambunctious banters, the playful exchanges. He watched. He waited. Some part of him envied the ease in which they held and trusted, so different from his own experience.

Mostly, however, he thought. These three were everything and all that Arthur had thought to save once the seams frayed and the folk strayed. Here they were, safe and free. Protected from that life so that they could be the family that none of them had.

Protected, however, also from knowing that their found family, those bonds set by time and not blood, had not been full lost either. A brother and uncle still living, but made to be dead to keep this moment’s joy safe and sacred. Charles had dug the grave himself, as he had sworn to, and laid a corpse from the mountain massacre in it to strengthen the illusion with bones and flesh to rot and pick. The cross and engravings left to mark it made it clear to the passing eye that Arthur Morgan was dead and meant to be lost to time, forgotten as the years would stretch on.

It only needed words now and again to maintain this illusion, but he was no Hosea Matthews, silver-tongued and eager to show it. Lies weakened the spirit and the mind’s resilience, though the cost could be argued as worth the loss to those that embraced it. Charles walked a fine line on it, never clearly saying that Arthur Morgan was dead. He could speak to their being a grave marked with his name, but never more finite than that, never more to risk the falsehoods being burned away like fog under the morning sun. John and Abigail each failed to ask him for more, which made it a charade easier to maintain by their grieving acceptance of a reality built on misunderstood facts and misguiding statements. His conscience did not ease for all that they accepted it, and him, and instead often weighed heavy on how he could let good people like these suffer in mourning.

Still that part of him asked, whispered late into the night, whether he helped or hindered more by this crafted illusion. That guilted conscience rested, in part, behind why he rode south with claims to see Sadie’s safehaven. He sought proof from Arthur himself, the opportunity to know if he had been right or wrong in betting on his health and survival, but also to see if the man retained the appetite to remain as dead to a world that had all but forsaken his kind of outlaw.

John had suffered the loss of a moral compass when Hosea died and in the absence of both Dutch’s increasingly manic visions and Arthur’s protective guidance, he clearly struggled to be his own man. Abigail tried, but so set on their freedom and family that she’d delve into arguments that strayed even a hair from those values, the debates heated with anger and frustration. And then young Jack, the seeming glue that kept them from fracturing, proof in life that they had to stay careful together, but unable to understand fully what had been lost.

Did their ignorance of Arthur’s situation, then, serve a purpose now? Charles gave them disservice by having no answer readied. He could no more doom Arthur to a living notoriety than he could lie cleanly of the man’s death. It was not his role to fulfil and it went against the rules he set and swore himself to in a world that took pleasure in beating his sort down, keeping them down.

This dilemma was one that he held himself ready to question, however, once he found Sadie and Arthur in Lemoyne and could speak frankly of the lies and their need with those in possession of those full details.

“You been quiet a while, Charles,” Abigail spoke up, holding a tin plate of hare and fish, both fried up, over towards him.

He blinked, those thoughts sent to ground, and looked at her. “I have.” Quiet confirmation given with an enigmatic smile, a duck of his head in appreciation for the food that he accepted. “Thanks.”

“Charles’s always quiet,” John was saying. His words stumbled together, slurred some from the half bottle of liquor spent in him as celebration of the day’s hunt and consolation for the boating excursion endured in doing it. He chuckled to himself at some drunken reflection. “Don’t you remember all them times Uncle’d tried to get him to talk at meals?”

Charles did, the antics all too often witnessed with an amused smile by Sadie and all too frequently ended with Uncle stomping away in a fine dishumour, swearing to crack that aloof façade one of those days and never quite managed it. His life had never been one of mingled society and amusement and he’d resisted the lure of friendship, companionship among those that drew his attention; he could no more blend with the masses than John could walk true a life without someone holding him to a steady course – a role fallen to Abigail alone now. He often pushed away overtures that came upon him with honeyed sweetness to join the circle by the fire and share his tale. Rare had been the time he indulged, a night in Lemoyne come to mind; trapped in camp by a state prejudiced against his dual heritage, he had spoken to his struggles at the fireside and then shrugged them off, redonned his mantle to be distanced. To not be plied by silvered tongues that spoke only to gain traction, holding the expectation that their words might bear fruit to better the lives of others at the cost of his own.

Disdain, mostly, would be what he felt for the dance of words. Disassociation; kept apart by circumstance and choice both. Ever could he find better uses for his time, his few words, and so he always pushed gently away over engaging those false interests.

Abigail shushed at John, waving a hand to quiet him. “Why’d I let you open that bottle,” she muttered with a shake of her head. She looked back at Charles, head tilted with a shading of concern. “You okay?”

The food, taken up and eaten slowly, was fresh and good. Charles tore off a piece of rabbit and nodded his head. “The food is great,” he said, as though distracted. It was not John and Abigail he held himself back from, not out of anything more than habit long engrained in him, but explaining that was a task he stood unready to take on. “Thanks.”

Her eyes narrowed sharply, the worry exacerbated as her shrewd mind took hold, analyzed his words, his posture, and all he had done since arriving. Harder than most of them, Abigail Roberts, and he had the fleeting sensation of being hunted through his words by a predator most skilled. “What ain’t you sayin’ to me?” she challenged, hands folded flat on her lap, foot tapping steady and firm on the ground.

Charles shook his head. “It’s nothing,” he implored, seeking a sense of calm.

“It’s about as nothing as John is sober,” she told him, sharply to the point.

John sat heavily on the log across the way and scowled. “I’m not drunk neither,” he muttered, taking another pull from the bottle to prove his point in the way that only the inebriated could reason to.

“You ain’t walking straight, John Marston, and that ain’t no lie,” she contested, readied and quick with her retort.

They were the most domestically peaceful dynamic that he knew, even for all their chaotic bickering, and Charles chuckled, low and slow. “I’m fine,” he soothed.

“Let him be, Abigail.” Bit irate, this comment shot over from John. “It’s been a long day and you’re makin’ it longer by naggin’ at him.”

Charles finished up his meal in silence, moved to clean up the dishes without prompting. Continued at it in spite of Abigail’s telling John to take over and John doing his best to protest the task and Charles doing all the work when they could make the boy do it! He placated them, said that he was fine and that soothed his conscience as the truth it was. He could, at least, offer them this where he could not give them hope.

Jack toddered off to bed not long after, leaving the three of them around the fire to idle the night, no watch set with so small a camp and cluster of folk. John worked open a second bottle, this one whiskey, and Abigail rolled her eyes as she went with a mug of coffee herself. Charles settled himself to sharping his tomahawk, a relaxingly familiar task, as they took to their differing vices.

“How’s we supposed to reach you if you’re riding all over the states?” Abigail asked after a while. Seemed she considered him worth the safety of her family, wanting to keep track of him for at least a letter or update now and again.

Charles kept at the steady strokes of the whetstone against the curve of the blade, angled to sharping the point to a fine edge. “You don’t” served as his honest reply.

“You won’t be riding back up to Wapiti?” John may have been drinking, but he’d been right in saying he wasn’t full drunk. Been watching the exchange, thoughtful, likely comparing it to their morning discussion and drawing parallels.

Charles shook his head. If Arthur had recovered even a third of his health, he might be able to convince himself to head back that way; but, if he remained ill to any degree similar to what he’d seen in Van Horn, then he’d set himself on staying. Things were complicated and he didn’t full feel as though he belonged with Rains Fall and his people. Never full felt like he belonged anywhere, in truth, but Arthur? The man’d accepted him, never challenged his worth and, instead, put words to valuing it. He wanted to repay him some for that steadfast support. For being a friend that Charles acutely felt the absence of. “I’ve some business in Rhodes,” he reiterated, unchanged from earlier statements. “Maybe, once that’s sorted, I’ll stop riding for a while.”

Abigail toyed with the cup, now empty of coffee, and looked straight at him across the low-flickering flames, eyes lit up like embers. “You’ll let us know if you need help.” Stated, not offered nor requested; she left no room to contest that assertion. “Because you ain’t like them others, Charles. I think it’d be good for John and the boy both if you was around some.”

John jumped like he’d forgotten his part in all this, blinked owlishly at her a few times as he caught up the meaning. Didn’t reject it neither, even held off turning it down outright. He swiped at his nose, sniffed in a breath and then drank in some whiskey first. “Send word up this way to Robert Jackson,” he said, a simple way of agreeing with Abigail without putting specific words to it and have her winning whatever contest of bickering they kept on with. “I ride out every couple days. It’ll reach us soon enough, and Hector’ll forward anything we miss if we have to up and leave.”

Charles let the words sink from the air, suffuse his thoughts as he slowly nodded. “Appreciate it,” and truth told, he did. He wanted to be able to tell them, to send them news of a better sort once he reached Rhodes, but he needed to know himself first. Then he might be able to send an update to Robert Jackson they way they’d both put forward as option, give them something more that mournful grieve to hold in their hearts. Having that avenue of sending it’d help, if Arthur and Sadie both agreed to peel back this veil of death.

The rest of the evening passed easily, with no more pressure put to him on that and little more discourse scattered between them. John finished off the bottle of whiskey and passed out on the log, good as drunk after two bottles. Abigail nattered at and about his irresponsibility with liquor with an irate energy and Charles? He observed, quiet, and absorbed their dynamic, took comfort in it to keep him company on the long and solitary ride to Lemoyne he’d embark on come morning.

-

Several days runnin’ without leaving Willowstead made sense and gave ‘em comfort, but Arthur’d been itching some for change and purpose. What he’d found at the bottom of two rum bottles startled him, even as the blurred lines between what he’d normally say and what went on in his head let them words slip out. His admission to Sadie and her invitations to him; it’d changed things more than he expected and not just from the sparking of the sex, but them meanings beneath it. Waking slow and hungover the next morning, them details remained mostly there in his haze recollection. The rest, less so.

The lure of sleep faded with reluctance and he stretched back his head, scruff brushing rough against the pillow below his cheek. Arthur drew in a breath, huffed it out, and cracked his eyes open to catch sight of something he ain’t ever expected to appreciate or have so much as he did right then.

Sadie lay between him and the wall, hair fallen half over her face as she slept, one of his arms curled loose around her, knuckles brushing against the blanket where it’d rumpled and creased at the small of her back. Her hand, though... He realised that her hand lay held in his free one and her grip tightened when he made the slightest tug to draw it away. A small, discontent whimper – closer to irritation, if he had to put words to it - and she reached out, pulled herself closer against him in sleep-shrouded reflex. Proof, a vulnerability shown only in sleep, of how afraid she really were of being struck alone once more. She ain’t never lied about it, nor played it otherwise, but still hit him with the force of a train these few times her guard come down, put an ache in his chest for her that had nothing to do with tuberculosis.

Careful in extricating his hand from her grip without rousing her, Arthur tucked her hair back, smoothed his thumb down her chin. Weren’t still, nor ever would be, sure why or what he’d done to deserve her compassion, but he’d started to understand that being content to have it weren’t no foul sin. The idea of sleeping alone or riding solo when Sadie could well be part of it? It all lost the familiar old comfort when he thought to it. Arthur weren’t sure he could trust himself to leave her if he had to. If the law came breathing down his neck again or some other spectre of past transgressions crossed their path, didn’t know if he could let go unless it’d save her from something worse.

He had something with her.

Had something he lived for now: to wake up and see her there; to know she were there by and with him when all else hadn’t been. Found it harder to hate the healing and the resting that the sickness wrought as the cost of his survival; founded the determination to get his strength back founded in a want and a need to stand with her. Equally share the burden, the way she expected to share it equal with him. Felt some like he were due to do right with her, make amends for times he ain’t done so right, so long as she was there with him. Like maybe he could find a way to live and keep with her, no matter what his experiences told him about opening his arms and his heart to anything but cold killing.

...even when her head rolled to an odd angle, like it did right then, and a soft snore started filtering from her.

Arthur smiled and ain’t even realised it; a real, honest sort of appreciation what gave it strength to curve his lips up at this sacred little scene of her peaceful and trusting in sleep. No sarcasm, no sickness, no ploy; sincere, like this were good and right and, just maybe, might be worthy of them both.

Bit loud, he figured when her breath caught up with a startled snort, but good.

_Might also be that I could love you._

A fool’s romantic declaration, spurred by the rum without doubt. But, unlike the rum, this thing? Them words? He did not regret them this next morning and that perplexed him; ain’t never been a romantic sort and been told as much time and again, but this maybe. Weren’t no sweet courtship of flowers and candies, but suited them both better, it did, the way he’d come to terms and words with it.

Then, her response. Loud and clear and able to get him going even as he lay here, thinking about it the next morning. The way she sounded and moved; moaned and screamed at the right touches; cussed when the edge she’d chased with him come close to fulfilment. So far from the ladylike restraint of Mary, the cautious indulgence of Eliza. Passion in her, he figured, and it fueled him no small measure, fed back passion into his blood and bones and, well. They’d landed in bed to satisfy them both.

Sleeping still as she were, though, he didn’t press the morning’s manifestation of attraction. Pulled the blanket up over her shoulders and pushed the beaten flat pillow close so’s she’d at least feel like she weren’t alone once the bed lost the heat, the comfort of his body. Then he eased off the mattress and, quiet as could manage, pulled on a pair of trousers and looped the suspenders over his shoulders. Winter near Rhodes turned out warmed, the sort where he didn’t need a union suit most days, nor a jacket to be wandering out during the sunlit hours, and that made approaching the day simpler for the early needs.

Arthur moved outside, looped around back for his morning ministrations, including sating that early demand for Sadie with his hands instead. Cleaned himself up and drew fresh water with a bucket he carried back inside to start a fresh pot boiling for coffee, the stew pot refilled to begin simmering some cut oats to soften up in the way of food to break the fast.

All that time, Sadie’d remained locked in sleep’s embrace, though not as peaceful in it as when he’d left. She’d curled up, small and tightly twisted in the thin blanket, the calm of her expression twisted with a grimace that’d come over her features. Sign of one of them nightmares he’d heard her through back when he were sick real bad, her bed set as a canvas roll near his mattress, and unable to lift his head long enough to soothe none of it, too wrapped and bound by the claws in his chest and left gasping by the effort to do more than lay there and suffer through the sound of her haunted pain.

Arthur left off the water and moved back, sat on the edge of the bed. Gentle as he brushed her hair back and called her name to lure her away from that darkness. “Wake up,” he added, soft as his weathered voice could manage. She started awake, eyes open, hand quick to grab his wrist. Ready to fight, then equal fast to let him go as recognition triggered.

Blinked a few times, rubbed the heel of her hand at her eyes as she gained a sense of what’d happened, that she’d been dreaming and this here was the reality. “Ain’t nothing,” she muttered sleepily. “Thought- Weren’t here, is all.” She winced at the light, pulled the pillow over her head as the rum’s effects spilled over from the night before, and groaned petulantly. “Turn the damn sun off.”

Soft as his chuckle came out, she still lashed out with a flippant smack of her hand on his thigh, a complaint of how it ain’t fair he came out walking and waking after all they’d drank tossed his way and it still done nothing to blur that affectionate surge what surged whenever he caught her in these unguarded moments. “Got me a few years on you in the drinking game,” he reminded her, the fact standing that he had enough age to him that he really ought’ve been put out to pasture long ago. “Y’alright there?”

Eyes clouded with annoyance and the cottony fog of the hangover, Sadie squinted at him from a crease in the pillow. “Ain’t nothing,” she repeated, slower. “Jus’ them same damn dreams.”

Dreams and nightmares; they both had them in spades. “Ain’t meant to leave you alone to ‘em,” he said, near as an apology he’d dare.

“Same as I can’t stop you from running yourself down like a fool, you ain’t gonna be stopping these any time soon,” she replied, pushing herself up from the mattress slowly. She let out a breath and stretched, not minding that the blanket pooled around her hips with the shirt full off one shoulder now and, well. Pleasure and experience he had in exploring what she brought to view aside, he’d been raised somewhat right – by Hosea, at least. Averted his gaze towards the fireplace, where steam’d started to rise up from the coffee pot, rather than staring overtly.

“Coffee’s ready,” he said, standing and headed over to pour them each a mug. “Figure some oats boiled’d serve for breakfast. Could go out, see if I can’t get some quail or something later,” he continued, planned plenty on being lazy in recovering from overindulgence.

Sadie, having less a sense of the proper way to deal with her hangover, let out a grumbled breath. “I gotta ride into Rhodes,” her statement made. “See what other bounties are marked up at the sheriff’s office.”

The look he shot, guarded and quick, earned a sharp snort.

“We need money, Arthur,” she reminded him. “And I ain’t gonna ride out after none of them today, promise.” Sadie’d been talking ‘bout it, sure, but after that Duchess incident, weren’t something he wanted either of them running solo on. Especially not after them thoughts he’d had about living with her, instead of just because of her, earlier.

“You just haul back whatever ones look ripe,” he allowed, cautious. “We can talk strategy on ‘em over dinner, figure if there’s something worth goin’ for.” Bounty hunting ran risks more than just being shot; he ain’t wanted them to do many, to get no reputation for it. He wanted them to go for the few that’d net them cash, not credit for it. And by her grudging agreement to his suggestion, she felt about the same.

-

Rum weren’t her friend no more, Sadie decided as she rode Zeus steady through Rhodes. Sunlight and people talking were something awful beating at her head after too much rum and too little water, food, or resting. Regrets over it were not on the table, but hell if she didn’t think back with longing to having chased a second cup of coffee after the first before she’d ridden out on a stomach of boiled oats, coffee, and the nauseated sensation that she and rum were never to again be buddies.

Reason she’d still ridden out at all were to get a line on some better bounties than that damnable Duchess’d turned out to be. Seemed the best way to make monies without having to prostrate herself to no commercial operations was to haul in unlawful types for justice and a solid payday; the sort of work that could be picked up and dropped without worryin’ overmuch on being missed if they had to up and leave. When they finally did up and leave, come spring melt in the northern stretches of Ambarino and New Hanover, maybe.

Town ran mostly quiet these days, them late-night drunkards often escorted home by a deputy before noon come calling. Troublemakers, she’d learned, were being brought to task and fast; this sheriff made good on his intents and promises that it’d be law, not lawlessness, what ran this town. Whether that lasted with someone like Dutch van der Linde set up shop in nearby Saint Denis? Hell if she knew; but so long as he kept there and she ain’t run into him here, then she weren’t going to lose more sleep over it.

The quiet suited her hangover just fine, though, and she left Zeus hitched out front the lawman’s office, paused to pull herself a pack of biscuits that she started to snack upon as she mounted the steps. “Morning, boys,” she greeted, door pushed upon and bootsteps carrying her inside. All traces of rum’s lingering hold were supressed under her tight smile as she checked on who’d reported for duty before she’d head over and check on the bounty posters.

Full complement was in today: Sheriff and three deputies, plus some of them hired muscles like Clyde, who’d been busted up and rubbed raw by Arthur’s taunting, left with a crooked nose and seemed now a scowl any time he saw Arthur or her. She spotted a newer fella with a cauliflower ear, veteran of too many barfights, and a couple other faces she’d seen now and again the few times she’d come through Rhodes. Lots of folk for a small office like this, threatening to overflow into the cells to make space for them all.

“Hang on here, fellas,” she said and seemed they all paused what they was doing to look her way, couple of them awkward in how they eyed the way she’d done and dressed, trousers and a shirt, suspenders and a vest in a fashion as functional as any man’s. She looked at them all, her glare challenging some of them judging her looks, and noted they was standing around like they’d been waiting on something big. “You boys having a part and didn’t invite me?” False hurt laced her tone, for sheriff ain’t known where she holed up with Arthur and therefore none of them would have that knowledge to find and tell them. Only that slithering Alden over at the train station had a clue, but his mug ain’t one of the faces she saw then.

Sheriff Thomas stood behind his desk, pulled off his hat in a short, gentlemanly approximation of manners. “Morning, Mrs. Adler,” he intoned in a pleasant, formal type of greeting. Seemed that when her ‘husband’ weren’t causing no trouble, she earned herself a right polite treatment from this frank man. Supposed that made Harmon Thomas the sort of man a desperate place like Rhodes needed: Mannered and efficient at cleaning out the refuse. “What can I do for you this morning?”

“I was here for another of them bounty posters,” she commented, brushing crumbs off on the side of her trousers as she glanced between the papers and the people.

“Well, we got no real ringers up today,” he said, mind that it weren’t quite apologetic. She real hoped he didn’t turn out to be the sort what said a woman had no place running after outlaws, because then she’d have a problem with the good sheriff and that’d be a shame. But he ain’t followed up the statement with no commentary like that, keeping her measure of him on the positive slide of the scale.

Sadie moved across the room, the bland spread of names and dollar figures on the wall all confirming them as an unappetizing lot what weren’t much worth the effort chasing them down until the monies inked there went up. “That’s a shame,” she muttered, breaking a fresh biscuit in half. Turned and gestured with it to the menfolk clustered around, half of them quick in taking off their hat in a belated imitation of stale-dated southern manners. “So, why’s it you all are here if there ain’t nothing doing?”

“We got a work detail coming in from Sisika,” Harmon said, hat set neatly back atop his head now that they were talking business. “Private buyer wants the old Braithwaite house torn up to make way for some grand new plan. Paid for them labourers out of the penitentiary, and for my boys here to keep them in line while they work.”

“Huh.” Sadie considered that, walking along the wall and near to the cells. She gave a wary nod to Duchess, still held pending some charge or investigation or subtle detail what weren’t her concern. They’d a rough sort of truce, she supposed, and Duchess seemed content in her cell, where she might be waited on for her daily needs over living rough out in the swamps. Sadie waited to make sure the woman weren’t about to throw something at her before she handed in one of her biscuits as a bland peace offering. Duchess smiled, teeth shown to be crooked and rife with gaps, and nodded her appreciation on it.

Weren’t any left to the package then, so she crumpled the paper to drop on the floor, brushed off her hands, and crossed her arms. “These boys good enough to handle it?” she asked, nodded to them. “I seen what they done to my husband and I ain’t sure they’ve got the patience to mind a bunch of chained up folk without beating them.” She smiled, bright and fierce and damn did that ruffle up her rum-touched headache. “Seems like you could use some extra muscle.”

There came a choked, nasal laugh from the busted nose of Clyde. “This’s hard work, ma’am,” he thought fit to inform her, like it’d chase off the interest.

The sheriff frowned, a glare sent over to silence the man. “No. Should be easy workings, I just don’t like leaving things to chance.”

“Clyde, I ain’t looking to hear that tongue of yours wagging,” she warned him. “Ain’t you one of the ones what rode out four times and ain’t ever found Duchess?” She rolled her eyes, looked straight at Harmon. “Sheriff, surely you want someone what has a working pair of eyes to be watching these criminal sorts.”

Duchess laughed from her cell, delighted at something. “Oh, but I saw him each time that he don’t seen me,” she called, tossing the last quarter of her biscuit at him. Earned her a cuss from the slighted man that everyone else ignored, including Duchess.

“You saying that you want some work, Mrs. Adler?” Harmon was cool as he watched her, the sort to appraise over appreciate. Wanted the best, most lawful solution always and with suffrage being a real force, guess that meant he considered womenfolk a viable option. Or, least, that her actions in bringing Duchess back had made her worth the consideration, proven her skill as on par with the menfolk.

“I’m asking what you’ll be paying me to help keep them in line.” Sadie never went enjoying or rallying for permission; she challenged (and mostly won), which’d always been a route what suited her best.

“Ten dollars a day to stand guard on the crews,” Harmon offered, choosing not to fight her assumption that she’d have the job whether or not he wanted her to, but instead to negotiate the terms to his liking.

Sadie, though, weren’t trusting the quick collapse of restraint in letting a woman in on the work this far south, suffrage or not. “And what’s it you’re paying these boys?” she asked, wary.

An uncomfortable silence crashed by a loud cackle over Duchess’s way. “Sheriff, she got you!” her giggled merriment between loud snaps of laughter. “He’s paying them twenty a day. Each. You okay with ten, love?”

That had her arch up a brow high, her impression of the sheriff falling a notch at this attempt to short her compensation in ignorance. “Twenty dollars a day it is,” she told him, ain’t no mindset held to budge on it and the man’d be lucky she ain’t requiring more to offset that insult. “And give Duchess some credit, sheriff. Seems she saved you from giving these boys preferential treatment. Ain’t morally right, that.”

Harmon Thomas drew out a long and well-suffering sigh before he nodded slow and steady. “Alright,” he agreed. “Twenty a day, same as these boys are getting, but you do the same work as them.”

“Way I see it,” Sadie said with a chuckle, “is I already done more work bringing in Duchess than this lot done in a week. You ain’t got to worry about me none.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whatever I did to deserve y'all and your kind support? I'm glad I done it.
> 
> We're at 23 chapters here in the Willowstead and there are plenty more to come. All those threads that have been laid out are starting to weave together and we'll be seeing familiar faces joining the story soon.
> 
> Of course, Sadie and Arthur continue to be unable to properly express and discuss their feelings, but. They are getting there and _will_ get there, I promise. Started one of the final scenes to the epilogue of ASM last night. While there's a good deal of the epilogue that I want to adjust on the writing, I think it'll be a satisfactory closing to ASM once we get there and before we move onto the sequel.
> 
> March comes marching in now, with spring snowstorms and the hopes of a thaw. Change is the theme and hopefully y'all are doing what you need or want to do in order to be your true selves. I support and encourage you!
> 
> iluall - be back next week with more ASM <3
> 
> \- Kichi @[KichiWhy](https://twitter.com/KichiWhy) (Twitter)


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